Misanthropic
by followsrabbit
Summary: They've always liked playing games. Clato
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games. Obviously.

* * *

It isn't the sort of building at which one ends up accidentally. The Training Academy, rather, is too abrasive with its striking size and stone exterior, too disconcerting with the brutality of its interior, to even feign friendliness. Its walls, walls of weapons which would leave even the most accomplished of collectors drowning in waves of envy, hold nothing unrelated to killing, maybe maiming (blatant torture, unfortunately, is frowned upon) - spears, knives, swords, throwing stars, and the like. Rows of doomed dummies stand in stoic anticipation of their inevitable demise and replacement on the padded floor of each gym.

Coherent words rarely cluster the air around their black plush bodies. There's a certain cacophony, to be sure, but it is instead composed of grunts, pants, and perhaps the occasional growled threat or warning, the sharp censure or praise of a trainer (it doesn't matter the mood of the message; somehow the tone remains unchanged). The Academy is not a place well suited for chatter, whether it be mindless or deep. It's thrashing and throwing. It's stealth and silent plotting. It's the fresh blood stains that smirk up at the District Two trainees from the floor.

Clove, personally, has yet to find a place homier.

Or maybe _had _would be a better way of putting that. As in past tense. As in when she could take advantage of the Academy's bloody terseness and behave as anti-socially as she liked.

As in before her trainer, Calliope, pulled her aside to inform that she was one of the few being assigned a fucking _training partner_ due to her apparently "poor socialization skills."

Clove scowls. She happens to be quite fond of those.

For once, it's not a relief to enter the gym. For once, it's all that she can do not to storm right back out. The dagger sheathed against her thigh (in direct violation of the Academy's warnings against trainee possession of outside weapons within its walls) almost itches, goading her to do so, to storm back into Calliope's office and use it to erase the woman's words by cleanly slicing the older, clearly cracked, woman's tongue off, leaving her a mute mess incapable of reissuing the order. Clove doesn't do this, of course, for a number of reasons, the least of which being that such behavior would probably do more to prove Calliope's whole speech about the dangers of her 'misanthropic approach to life' and 'inability to collaborate with others' than anything else that she can possibly think of. Anyway, she'd hate to lose the dagger that technically should be laying on her bedside table, rather than sliding against the pale skin of her leg in a comforting leather-clad, embrace.

Honestly, though, as if this plan is going to help her. If they think that forcing her to spend her beloved training time with Cato Ludwig, of all the brawny, brainless idiots out there, is going to be anything other than a precursor for murder, then she's given far too much credit to the Academy's intelligence over the years.

Cato Ludwig. It doesn't take her furious ice blue eyes long to locate him. She may have spent the years cultivating the inconspicuousness of a particularly poisonous breed of wallflower, but every heave of his chest seems to demand that every living figure in a ten foot radius observe his presence.

_Way _too much credit.

Her only consolation is (and she garners this impression from the sight of several mutilated dummies, along with what looks to be a matching set of battered knuckles which he must have literally beaten against the nearby wall) that he's hardly more pleased about this arrangement than she is.

For the first time since the meeting, she manages to push the scowl off of her face, in favor of a smirk. Good. Not that he has anything to be upset about. He's gaining a brilliant tactician with a lethal aptitude for knives as a partner. She's the one stuck with a brute who likes to hit things.

He catches her eyes with his own, assessing her, evaluating her. Waiting to see if she'll approach him. Clove turns away and walks towards the glass container of knives mounted against the wall and its myriad of glinting blades. She doesn't need to assess him. No, she already knows everything that she needs to.

It's a comfort to wrap her fingers around the handle of her favorite knife, to feel her pathetically small hands grow deadly with the weight of Medea, her nickname for this particular weapon, against her palm.

Holding her head high, she walks towards Cato.

_Partners _- her fist clenches around Medea- or not, she's ready for battle.

* * *

Cato looks at her as she might look at a butter knife. His pupils, clad in bright blue irises, skirt over her as if she were nothing but a weak, insignificant mockery of what a trainee should be. It's true that if she had a few more inches to bolster her height, she might intimidate more easily (unfortunately, very few people realize with much immediacy the damage that a 5'3" girl can do). She _used _to think their slowness was unfortunate, at least.

Clove smiles sweetly at the enormous male, perking up her wallflower petals, hiding the poisonous leaves. She's since learned the fun of toying with people who doubt that she'd even be worth the trouble of playing with, let alone pulling a set of puppet strings herself. Not that it's a tidbit that takes much work to discover.

His own weapon of choice seems to be a sword. But she already knew that. She's seen him before slicing dummies, going through the motions of swinging his long blade. She's seen most people. Cato may have spent the duration of his life immersed in too heavy a dose of self-absorption to have already become familiar with her skill set, but she's aware of almost everyone's.

Screw Calliope. Clearly, life as a misanthrope has its advantages.

And it's people like him who remind her of that; boys pretending to be men and overcompensating with large weapons of bulk, who believe fully that all it takes to obtain something is one look, one blow. Boys who know they have the looks of Adonis and act as though a superior physique couldn't be found in all of fucking Panem.

"You lost, little girl?"

The words are so absurd, so utterly creepy, pedophilic, that Clove may have laughed if they hadn't been directed towards her. Underestimation, she's learned to appreciate. It's patronization that irks her.

Shoulders tensing with irritation, she crosses her arms. "We're in a gym, not a labyrinth."

A bemused look overtakes Cato's face and she wonders for a moment if he's seen his mistake in underestimating her. If so, it's a less amusing reaction than some that she's witnessed in the past. The revelation, after all, is usually the best part.

There's still time for that, though.

A few more seconds are devoted to appraisal, but that quickly leaves Clove twisting her knife around in boredom. She's had a lifetime to appraise every single person in this room, and doesn't have any deep seated inclination to help him catch up.

"Look, you stay out of my way. I stay out of yours. We get through this with as little interaction as possible." With any luck, she won't even have to break the implied rule against torturing fellow trainees.

Cato props himself against the gym wall with a smirk, apparently having forgotten the snarl with which he had greeted that same padded mass only moments earlier.

"No need to worry." Apparently it is possible for people to smirk through their voices. "I'll go easy on you."

Goody. Impossible as it had seemed, he was, in actuality, even less perceptive than she'd been anticipating.

His fingers, annoyingly large, gruff, and everything that her own, when naked of knife, fail to be with their girlishness, reach out to stroke the pink flesh of her check. "Wouldn't want to hurt such a pretty-"

Clad between her fingers, the blade whips itself out in less time than it would take a camera to flash, slicing the offending hand against the wall.

There. She smiles truly now, satisfied. _That _was the revelation she was looking for. The sudden speechlessness, the harsh glare, the blatant disbelief that she just thrust her knife, tip-first, into the center of his palm.

"Nope." Eager fingers jerk the favored weapon right back into their possession. "Wouldn't want that."

It's almost impressive, the restrain the shows. His hand must be throbbing, but he doesn't clutch it, doesn't attempt to soothe the pain.

Of course, maybe "restraint" isn't the best word to use in reference to him. Especially since his immediate reaction is to lunge at her petite form, bringing her down to the floor in a tackle.

Squirming beneath him, she glares up at his maddened features - the narrowed, bloodshot eyes, the contorted mouth.

"You little bitch," he grounds out.

If he hadn't thrown the "little" part in, she might have taken that as a compliment. As it is, she continues to struggle against his weight.

No. She won't let him win. She's just as strong as he is. Stronger. And she'll chop herself up with her own blade before giving him the satisfaction-

God, she's an idiot. Body stilling suddenly with the realization of just how exactly he has managed to pin her down so effectively to the ground, she focuses on his monstrous hands. They've trapped her own fists, knocked Medea several feet away from their tangled figures. Pathetically slender or not, however, her naked fingers, aren't entirely useless either. Clutching her sharp nails into the flesh of his palm, Clove digs into the wound left by her knife, ignoring Cato's slick blood and the way it smears over her skin like a flimsy makeshift mitten.

He growls before emitting a low grunt of pain, the kind that might escape some sort of wild dog (Clove doesn't think the comparison is completely unapt).

That's when a trainer, apparently deciding that they've been left to their own devices for long enough, finally intervenes, prying a snarling Cato off of her and sending him to medical. Clove receives a quick nod of approval. Which, really, makes absolutely no sense, since the whole point of this assignment was to improve her people skills - not that she's about to complain.

Socializing will be _so _much easier if it goes synonymously with stabbing.

* * *

Honestly, she doesn't understand why he's quite so angry. Granted, underused as her people skills her, Clove does understand that taking a knife to someone's hand is not usually the most efficient way to earn good will, but District Two has enough medicine to patch him up easily. There's hardly even a scar (which has to admit, is a bit disappointing. She wouldn't have minded a souvenir). And it's not even as though anyone would dare laugh at Cato fucking Ludwig for anything, not even his very publicly displayed inability able to beat a girl who barely reaches his shoulder blade. Well, not much, anyway. Never to his face.

Oddly, this does not seem to comfort him.

It's a good thing that she really has no desire to earn his good will. Her eyes dart over to the case of knives. It's _those_ that she desires.

He's waiting for her again that day in the same spot, leaning against the very wall to which she had pinned his hand only a day earlier.

For a moment, she hates him. She hates his size, his muscles, hates her own waiflike façade that, when she's lacking a knife, isn't always quite as much of a façade as she would like.

Such thoughts, of course, fall away from her head once Medea is back in her grip - which is good since, even once she reaches him, his eyes continue to scorch her figure. She bites back an amused grimace. Apparently her days of invisibility have ended.

Clove cocks her head. "I wanted to thank you," she says with a mocking demureness. "For offering to go easy on me yesterday." Smugness quirks her lips. "I really needed that."

Smirk from the day before still in place, albeit with a more sinister gleam hiding within it, he leans towards her. His next words, the promise behind them, caress her left earlobe with a proximity that leaves her with a keen desire to stab him again. "You will."

Clove meets his burning stare steadily with her own icy orbs.

Not likely.

* * *

**Author's Note: So, this is my first attempt at trying to write Clato... Since they've sort of become my new OTP, I just couldn't resist. Let me know, please, whether or not anyone would like me to continue. Constructive criticism is also always welcomed :) If there's demand for them, future chapters will, hopefully, be longer.**


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

Their proceeding encounters fail to present quite the same excitement as that first one. Clove hasn't yet decided whether or not it was worth the shattering of her invisibility to clear Cato's, clear every other respective trainee's, mind of any suspicion that she is merely a "little girl" (not that her brutish partner, much to her displeasure, has deigned to give up that particular nickname). She has to admit, though, that she can't help but appreciate the weary looks that she now earns by simply walking down the hallway, and, as much as she still loathes the entire idea of having a partner, proving that she's more than able to keep up with one of the Academy's most impressive students hasn't been a wholly terrible experience. The trainers, of course, had long been aware of her skills. It was the other students who had never bothered to examine the petite girl who kept to secluded corners with her knives.

_Idiots_. She's surrounded by idiots.

Inconspicuousness, she misses at times. The intimidation factor, though, really doesn't suck. Neither does the fighting.

(Her dad, when he bothers to check in on her, that is, has always told her that she had inherited his violent streak.)

That's not what today is about, though. No, they were specifically told that they had each engaged in quite enough combat with each other. Apparently, the whole "collaboration" speech hadn't been quite as escapable as either would have liked.

The atmosphere in their area is stifling in its tenseness.

"I know how to throw a fucking knife!"

Clove rolls her eyes, warring with impatience and amusement at the sight of Cato's red face, clenched muscles. "Clearly you don't know how to throw one _well_."

He might throw knives with the precision of a drunkard, but if it was possible to inflict a stab wound by simply staring daggers at an opponent, she might have to watch out.

It's official. She's never becoming a trainer. She hates teaching, hates sharing the knowledge that she worked so hard to acquire herself. Besides, Clove happens to be a natural with knives. That's not something that can just be explained.

"_Again_," she says, biting back the disgust threatening to infect her voice. Sure, he has the monstrous 'I'm going to kill you slowly and enjoy the sound of your screams' look down fine, but that's hardly going to help him actually accomplish anything.

The blade hits the board - several paces away from the target.

"Pretty good," she says with mocking laud. "If you're name is _Haymitch Abernathy_."

Forget daggers. His eyes, gleaming a furious gemstone blue, are ready to move onto jabbing her through with long swords.

She sighs at the sensation of a trainer's glancing appraisal. As much as she abhors the thought of actually helping him advance, Clove can't imagine that it would reflect well on her if he fails.

Ice eyes darken as if reflecting a storm cloud-ridden sky.

She _never _fails.

A sigh slithers its way through her tightly clenched lips but she manages to force her next words out with some calmness. "Straighten your wrist more."

Still looking at her with a loathing that competes with her own, he obliges. Or attempts to, anyway - she assumes.

She had wondered at first how anyone could possible even delude themselves into thinking that forcing her into close contact with Cato Ludwig would do anything at all to "improve her social skills." Honestly, the only epiphany she's come to since becoming further acquainted with the brute is that she's had the right idea all these years, avoiding people, if he's anything to judge by.

It's suddenly easy to detect the reasoning. Clearly, he needs her. Badly.

Clenching her lips, attempting to swallow a grimace, she slides her fingers around his wrist. It's large, far too large for her slim fingers to encircle fully. It's her control that slips next. As a grimace washes over her features, her free fist clenches in irritation. As if she needed to give him anymore reason to call her "little girl."

But he doesn't. He simply smirks at her. "Enjoying yourself?"

Her fingertips pause their adjustments as she stares at him in expressionless anticipation of his inevitable elaboration.

Gaze growing less bloodthirsty, more smarmy, more - as she's overheard some of her fellow female tributes giggle - "swoon-worthy," he lowers his pupils to their entwined hands. "It's alright. I've been told I'm irresistible." He pronounces his next two words through a smirk. "Little girl."

Yes. About as irresistible as the middle aged drunkard from Twelve.

Perhaps she shouldn't have made it quite so clear just how much she hated that pet name - any pet name at all from him, really. She's usually smarter than that, usually would have seen that her very vocal protests would have the exact opposite effect than the one she had intended. He just makes her so _angry_.

Clove rolls her eyes with irritation at first. When he breaks his stance, however, in an attempt to smother her with a proximity which she supposes is meant to pass as intimidating, her mood quickly shifts into aggravation.

"Yes," she says through a sweet smile. Slender or not, her fingers are perfectly capable of inflicting a certain degree of discomfort as she painfully jerks his wrist into the correct position. "You caught me." Her nails, sharp and filed into points, claw crescents into the light flesh covering his veins. "I don't know how I've possibly managed to hold off for so long. I've just been _longing_ to get my hands on you."

Nails deepening their imprints before finally withdrawing, her kind smile contorts into a wicked grin.

Surprisingly, though, he doesn't revert back to what appears to be his trademark glare. The blonde haired boy simply returns her grin with one of equal cruelty.

(She's beginning to genuinely consider the possibility that, aside from being a conceited bastard, Cato is also somewhat bipolar.)

"Stance," she barks, meanwhile toying with the thought of the tantrum with which he'd, no doubt, respond to the suggestion that they move the target a bit closer. Just to make things easier on him, of course.

The curve of her pink lips deepens as she moves her tongue to form the words.

* * *

He's enjoying this. Clove scowls at the satisfied grin of sadism residing on Cato's face. He's enjoying this far too much.

(She's choosing to ignore the amusement that she'd felt only a day previous upon observing his own obvious inexperience with a knife).

"C'mon, Clove," he teases. "_Stance_."

Her eyes roll in irritation. _She _made that suggestion seriously. Well, more seriously than him anyway. He's just treating this like some big joke.

"My stance," the words resound with a certain grittiness as they force their way though her clenched teeth, "is fine and you know it."

Feeling his cerulean eyes drawling down to her legs, she waits for his agreement. She knows how to stand with a sword, thank you very much. Unlike some, she _listens _in class.

In a rare moment of sobriety, he agrees. "You're right."

It was the response that she had been anticipating, but it still takes effort for her not to stumble in surprise. And she'd thought that the day that Cato actually recognized her brilliance would the day that-

Then his blunt body begins to emanate smugness. "What you need is a lighter sword. Mine's too heavy for you, little girl." Very, very smug. "Wouldn't want you to take on more than you can handle."

And apparently she has not just encountered a warning sign of a coming apocalypse.

Clove wishes more than anything that she had her knife with her right now. She'd even take her clandestine dagger. _Anything _to carve that smirk off of his face.

Because, unfortunately, he's not completely incorrect. She doesn't have the same skill with the sword that she has with her more subtle, more _sophisticated_, blades of choice.

Not that she's about to admit that to him.

"I can hold this sword just fine," she says, sounding defiant, looking defiant, with her words hard and her face frigid.

Cato regards her with amusement, but doesn't argue. Her features grow even harder at his acquiescence. Because it's not due to submission to her will that he's putting up with her demand. He'd rather wait for her to admit that he was right, that she's too _weak_.

It's not happening.

_Not happening_.

* * *

A half an hour later, Cato is still smirking and Clove is still tense with resolve.

A prescient satisfaction already resides on his features, and, despite the unimpressive state of her dummy, compared to his own expertly slashed one, she keeps her lips cinched. Her arms will fall off before she lets him know that he was in, in fact, correct. This sword is far too heavy for her petite form to manage with much ease, much too large.

She can always come back later, though, when safe from his unwavering attention, to apply what he's told her to a more suitably sized weapon.

Mentally determined or not, however, her muscles are wearing. Her arms shake in a slight wave. _No_. She can do this. She can hold out. She can-

"Alright, there, Clove?" He doesn't try for mocking concern as she might have; there's no mistaking the taunt in his tone.

She opens her mouth to reply but another voice, one older, one with more authority, speaks first.

"Ludwig!" As much as she usually hates the intervention of a trainer into their battles, Clove has to admit that Calliope's entrance is not entirely unwelcome.

"What the hell are you thinking making a 5'4" girl fight with a sword that's nearly as tall as she is!" The censure in her voice is thick as she crosses her arms, stealing his brief authority. "Take this assignment seriously, Ludwig."

Cato nods stiffly as Calliope yanks the massive sword out of his partner's hand and replaces it with one of a more suitable size.

Training rhetoric composes the remainder of their conversation for that session but, throughout, Cato's exasperated glower is nearly as evident as Clove's sugar-drenched smile of victory.

_I win_.

* * *

Clove hates sharing. Loathes it, really, and it's not difficult to tell.

Despite the supposedly communal nature of the Academy's knives, there are only a few trainees, all in possession of extremely low brain capacities, who fail to recognize which ones it may prove fatal to take. Which ones are _hers_.

She hates sharing her knowledge as well (as has been made abundantly clear each and every time she and Cato practice with knives). The only sensation that she looks forward to less is that of sharing her inexperience with anyone - namely Cato. An unfortunate specification given that, aside from their trainers, he is the only one to whom she is required to show her weakness with swords.

There are other things too, of course. Her time, as demonstrated by her frequent solitude. Her lunch table. Her general space.

And she's never particularly understood the appreciation that some garner from sharing happine-she stops herself. _Satisfaction _with others.

This is why it surprises her so greatly when she and Cato share a smirk of exactly that. Definitely not happiness (she hasn't completely lost it), but not antipathy or amusement at the other's expense either. Satisfaction.

The snapped command of a trainer, Julius, she thinks he's called - although, since most of his duties relate to group work, she hasn't interacted enough with the gruff older man to be certain - serves as the instigator.

"Ludwig!" he shouts. "Fuhrman!"

Their chronic bickering interrupted, two sets of blue eyes dart in his direction. He gestures, with a swift flick of his wrist for them to cross over to his section of the gym.

Two other trainees are already present, a blonde girl a few inches taller, a few pounds heavier, than Clove and a muscularly built boy. The former stares at Cato with a lust that would have to be written on her forehead in bolded letters if she wanted to make it anymore apparent. _Disgusting_, Clove shivers the thought with no small amount of revulsion. Cato must be fucking loving this.

Except he's not.

Despite the girl's flirtatious wink, Cato's energy from beside her has suddenly tensed. Dramatically. It doesn't take Clove long to determine why, either - if the force with which his eyes have narrowed in on his male counterpart is anything to judge by, anyway.

In size, he's similar to Cato, with bulging muscles and a towering stature. His hair, however, is colored several shades darker, falls looser, if not exactly longer, around his head, and his irises, although just as striking, shine a deep brown color.

Turning to quickly assess Cato, Clove speculates that, if she were to try to bend his wrist once again into the proper knife throwing position, it would break, too tense to stand the flexing of those muscles. Any muscles, from the looks of it.

"Two on two," Julius instructs, stepping backward to give the two pairs room.

Cato's sudden outbreak of stress pushed to the back of her mind, she resists the urge to laugh. Fighting, she has no problem with. The opposite, actually. But with Cato? As in as a team?

The concept is so foreign that Medea nearly falls from her grip.

She can't help but send one more look in Cato's direction. He can't be any happier about this than she is. It's impossible. He has just as little respect for her, after all, as she holds for him. But his focus doesn't even flicker to her. He appears to have resumed practicing his still entirely pointless dagger staring technique, if not, this time, at her.

He and tall, dark, and decently handsome only have eyes for each other.

"Clove," he grits out as they begin to move closer to the nearby duo. "We have to win this."

Well, that was never a question. By the way he says it, though, you'd think that he was taking about the fucking Hunger Games, not an Academy exercise.

"Over-intense, much?" she says with light derision just to vex him. It's not as if she's keen on losing this fight, either. Really, for all the time they've spent together in the past two weeks, he should know her better.

Growling at her, he snaps, "Just stay out of my way."

No opposition from her corner. She'd rather fight solo, anyway. "Same to you."

Nodding at each other, they lunge into battle, Clove at the girl and Cato at the male.

Her own opponent isn't difficult to defeat, the platinum blonde's knife skills paling in comparison to Clove's. Her greater size extends the fight several minutes, but the ending is inevitable.

After she's tackled her own adversary to the ground and pressed the edge of her knife to her throat, thereby eliminating her from the match, she shifts her attention over to her partner.

His sword clashes with a shrieking blow against that of the figure that she now foggily recalls being named Gregoric, or something equally ridiculous.

Clove narrows her eyes. A minute, later neither has made much headway. Maybe, she wonders, _this _is why Cato clearly hates Gregoric so. They're too evenly matched. His advantage, even with his beloved sword, is slim.

Before she's even aware of what she's doing, she's at his side, directly disobeying not only his command (which is nothing new), but, more strangely, her own nature.

Odd. And odder still, since, as much as she loathes to admit it, Calliope might not be completely cracked after all. They are admittedly impressive together, viciously effective. They're almost synchoronized, aware of how the other will move with much better accuracy than Clove, despite her perceptiveness, had even thought possible. Really, she should probably be disturbed by how well she's come to understand him. That can't hint at anything good, aligning one's mind with someone as unsophisticated as Cato Ludwig.

Concerning or not, though, that's how Cato ends up pinning Gregoric to the floor with the tip of his sword, Clove standing to the side, allowing him to secure the final victory himself.

(If there's one thing she understands, it's the need to beat certain enemies personally.)

That's how they end up sharing a smirk of bloodthirsty satisfaction.

* * *

**Author's Note: First off, thanks so much to my reviewers, Jesus the Gardener and Meagan C!**

**I promise that this story will get more exciting soon. I was actually planning on skipping this chapter completely so that I could move immediately onto plot-heavier chapters, but decided that would be cheating, since this background information is somewhat important. Anyway, thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated.**


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

**Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading so far, especially to my reviewers: supergirl846, TheToothFairy92, blurred lines, Clato, Nina, Jesus the Gardener, and Dripping Tears. I really appreciate it :) **

* * *

Things change and they don't.

* * *

Tight fitting training pants shifting with her every stride, Clove departs from the Academy, adrenaline still rushing through her system from the fight. And yet, it takes no more than a few steps away from the spanning stone building for a small scowl to form on her face.

It's the sort of day that Clove loathes - bright with the sun gleaming, illuminating everything it can incorporate into its glowing path. Not to mention the birds. They're chirping. Singing. For all she knows, they're coming up with harmonies as she weighs the pros and cons of attempting to pin at least one of them into silence with her concealed dagger.

The latter list wins out. Tempting as the idea of aiming her weapon at the vocal chords of one of those sickeningly sweet voiced creatures was, she really doubts that she'd be able to get her knife back with much ease, were she to manage to hit one of her targets.

And so the dagger stays hidden.

Gritting her teeth with irritation, she quickens her pace, eager to surround herself with the quiet blandness of her bedroom.

Then she hears the pounding.

It's not exactly a clumsy noise - not at all. Loud as his footsteps are, she never suspected for even a moment that he might trip. Which, really, is a shame, since such a sight would be rather amusing.

By the time that Cato's lumbering figure catches up to her, however, the amused smirk has left her face completely, washed away as if it were never there, in favor of her favorite cold look of cruel collection.

His fight clearly took more energy than her own. It's apparent in the way that he pants after sprinting a distance that even a twelve-year-old trainee would scoff at, the slight layer of sweat that tints his features. Even his voice, angry and vehement as it may be, carries within it a hint of a post-battle weariness which she's sure he loathes.

"What was that?" he demands, digging his gruff fingers into her arm. She's still walking as he does so and the unexpected gesture flails her back in a rare moment of incoordination.

Clove attempts to pull away uselessly, her dark ponytail still swinging at the impact of her sudden stop. A glare bores down at his tight grip on her. "I'm going to need you to give me a bit more to go on. Not everyone speaks caveman."

Cato jerks her closer to him, so that his snarling face is in her direct line of vision when she tilts her head upward. "I told you to stay out of my way."

Lips, which had, not two minutes ago, been trembling with the effort of barring back several streams of derogatory choice words, release a torrent of hard laughter. That was what this was about? "You were taking too long," she says, propping her chin up higher so that she can meet his line of vision directly. "I got bored."

He's waiting for her to look away from his harsh, bright eyes, seek the sunlit ground for reassurance. Brutal as the beating his gaze is inflicting upon her may be, though, her own eyes, shards of ice that don't lack a certain formidableness themselves, refuse to waver.

Finally, after minutes of yanking and twisting, she manages to retrieve her arm, finding the will to refrain from rubbing the bruises left by his demanding grasp only by clinging to the strength of her pride, her disdain for his ego. The last thing he needs is yet more proof of his already clear strength.

Weakened as his physical hold on her may have become, his tone is still fierce as he growls out his next words through his teeth. "I had it under control."

Clove shrugs, her shoulders quirking into the air as she begins to walk again. That was likely true. "Probably."

It doesn't take long for her to realize that he's still beside her, this time keeping in pace with her strides rather than forcibly halting them. The anger seems to have vanished from his features (well, as much as it ever does), replaced by a contemplative satisfaction that nearly makes Clove roll her eyes. Bipolar, honestly.

"Gregoric is pissed," he says, sounding entirely pleased about this fact.

She keeps her eyes trained on the path ahead of her. Because she cares so deeply. "Not a surprising reaction when you've been publicly pummeled."

Before she can think about it, they're sharing a smirk again, but Clove quickly composes herself. She doesn't share. She isn't friendly. And she knows better than to change her attitude for Cato Ludwig, of all people, and his staggering mood swings.

"As he should be." Cato pauses and she wonders if he's replaying his rival's defeat in his head.

What is he still doing here, anyway?

Never one to mince her thoughts, Clove snaps the question aloud, flashing him a look at least as sharp as her words.

He looks at her like she's the crazy one. "Walking you home, of course," he speaks as though his answer is entirely natural, the smirk on his face the only evidence that he knows otherwise.

"Why?" she spats in disbelief. And she had truly believed that this day couldn't get any more nauseating.

The bemused patience on his face does nothing to alleviate her annoyance. "Now, what kind of gentleman," he ignores her snort of skepticism, "would I be if I left you to walk home alone?"

"Luckily for both of us, you're not a gentleman."

His smirk widens. "Then it's a good thing I have the chance to rectify that."

Clove shakes her head in exasperation, refusing to look at him, wishing beyond hope that he would get bored and leave her alone. Possibly fall into a ditch, if it's not too much trouble.

But he doesn't, of course. They just walk in tense silence until they reach her crescent moon front porch. Well, tense on her part, anyway. She's fairly certain that his side is filled with more vicious amusement at finally picking a game to play with her that he can win.

Clove cinches her lips together in a narrow line. They remain clenched through her trek up the steps, his shouted reminder that he'll see her Monday, and even into the sanctuary of her bedroom.

Screw the birds. She should have used the dagger on him.

* * *

Aside from in a gym, holding a sword, one would be hard pressed to find a setting more natural to Cato than the sunlight. It dances around his features, glazing over the bronzed angles of his face, the golden strands in his hair.

He looks like an angel, a brutal one, fallen, with blood staining his hands, but unearthly beautiful, nevertheless.

And he knows it.

As he saunters away from his training partner's large white house, Cato grins slightly to himself. It's funny. Fucking hilarious, actually. Here he's been, trying to rile her up for days, and all it took was putting on the charm that most girls at the Academy giggle and squeal over to set her off. She seemed to like him more when he was trying to run her through with a sword.

He wonders if she knows how fucked up she is.

It's not for several more blocks that he stops, and, even then, it's not at his house that he turns up and into the walkway. Not bothering to knock, he walks through the front door.

Three figures sit already reclined on the back porch as he makes his way out and back into the Friday afternoon air.

Their heads dart to his emerging figure, a motion that leaves a faint grin on his face. He enjoys the way that they spring to life upon his entrance, their immediate response, even their slight resentment.

Cato is the best of them, owns them, and knows it.

Achates stands up with his easy grin to slap him on the back. "Nice job, man."

Turnus and Rex echo the congratulations from their spots upon the steps as the former tosses Cato a beer.

He catches it easily, satisfied smirk still in place. "I've been waiting for them to match us up again for weeks." There's a feral note to his being as he takes his spot next to Achates, propping his right foot up lazily atop his other knee.

The other boy grins at him. "What, tired of your little training partner already?"

Cato takes a long swig of his drink through his still quirked mouth. "Not quite."

Rex shakes his head. "I don't know how you deal with her. The girl's psycho. Too bad they couldn't have put you with Andromeda, huh?"

Achates flashes him a knowing look. Neither Rex nor Turnus understand the way his mind works the way that he does. They know he's twisted, would have to be complete morons not to see that. But they don't get it, not really. Don't get that he'd bash his fucking brains out before spending that much time a day with Andromeda Weld. He doesn't say this though, just raises an eyebrow. "Better for fucking than training." It's true, as Cato has learned from experience. The tall golden haired girl, with her long legs and round chest, makes for a fine distraction outside of the Academy. But, inside, she wasn't worth a thought.

"Besides," he continues, relaxing further against the steps. "Gregoric doesn't want Andie."

Achates rolls his eyes. Similarly sized and skilled, Cato and Gregoric have been rivals for as long as he can think back, probably for as long as they've been attending the Academy. As they should be. He might like to entertain the thought of volunteering for the Hunger Games, but it's no secret that the male spot in their age group is taken - it will go to either Cato or Gregoric. Less clear is which one; the competition hasn't done wonders for their relationship.

Cato continues speaking, satisfaction still heavy in his voice. "I heard him going off on Julius after training, shouting about how if he'd been assigned Clove as a partner, instead of Lindy, he'd have beat me easy." He takes another swig of his drink. "Bullshit, of course."

Achates chuckles, wishing he could meet the guy capable of beating Cato easily, wondering if this Clove girl knows how things have suddenly changed for her. It was one thing back when she just annoyed his friend, intrigued him with her stubborn viciousness. This is different.

It's been the same way since they were kids, Cato needing to have the best of everything. The best practice swords, the best actual swords once they reached Academy. He can't imagine that the blonde has changed so much that he wouldn't be loving having something that his chief enemy envies.

"You think he'd request a partner change?" Rex breaks into the conversation.

The change in Cato's mood is staggering. A snarl overtakes his face at the thought. He can just picture the smug gratification Gregoric would garner from that, the victory. "Doesn't matter. They wouldn't give it to him." The statement is harsh, brutal, final. It leaves no room for argument.

Achates lets his face fall into his palm. It shouldn't, anyway. And yet there Rex is, with all the perception skills of a goldfish, opening his mouth again. "No, I think they gave one to Marius and Lisa, you know, now that it's been about a month since the original assignments and since they both agreed that they-" Finally, most likely at long last catching sight of the glower that's consumed Cato's every feature, he seems to understand that silence might have been advisable. Still, though, albeit slightly muted, he finishes his sentence, "they agreed that they wanted one, you know, a transfer."

"She's not going to request a transfer." This time no one argues with his stone clad words.

Cato, angry as the idea may have made him, doesn't even bother to argue with himself over it. The thought's ridiculous. She may not like him - hell, they might hate each other, but, like she'd said, she'd just seen Gregoric "publicly pummeled." Clove, psychotic or not, would laugh in his face if he came to her after that display.

More important, though, is the fact that Cato has always gotten what he wants, and at the moment, what he wants is Clove as his partner. He won't accept anyone less. Infuriating as she might be, she is, quite clearly the best of her gender in their level. Just as he is.

Rubbing his hands together as if trying to kindle a flame to break through the sudden cold tension, Achates sends Rex inside to restock the cooler, eager to return the moment to its former brevity.

Cato's good humor finally does return, if shortly before he's completely quit the impromptu introspection prompted by Rex's idiocy.

Besides, he smirks, Clove can't leave yet. Not with all of the games they've started.

* * *

Her house, naturally, is still empty when Clove enters the kitchen later that night. The solitude does little to surprise her. Her father's absences have become familiar, his rare presence the incongruity that leaves her on edge. She'd rather, at this point, that he spent his time exactly as he currently does, working. She'd rather have their large stone property to herself, would prefer to be alone.

Going through the habitual motions of washing leaves of lettuce, chopping carrots, and shaking it all into a salad, she lowers herself into a chair at the table. The thought of engaging in such domestic duties had once been... well, repelling, to say the least. Then her obsession with knives had grown - it all came back to her knives - and, domestic or not, the idea of not bothering to acquaint herself the set of kitchen knives, formerly used only by her grandmother, had seemed unacceptable.

This is how she spends her evening. A lone, content figure at a large table.

* * *

Cato's own night grows louder, more crowded, as the sky darkens. Boisterous laughter comes to occupy Achates' house as restless trainees funnel their way into the increasingly sparse space. Fridays, the days of rest that follow them, never fail to provide motive for celebration. A celebration of which, Cato, of course, is the center.

* * *

Neither thinks much of the other, their separate world.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

It's not supposed to become a ritual. It's not supposed to become a habit. What it's supposed to be is an anomaly, an irritation that will hopefully fade from her mind in time. He's never supposed to walk home with her, never supposed to walk _anywhere _with her again. But then again she's _supposed_ to be training alone. She's supposed to be invisible. Cato has a way of fucking things up, a way that Clove would almost find admirable if the consequences were not so often connected to her. Like they are now.

* * *

Clove regards the sword in her hand with no small amount of hostility. For all of its forcefulness, all of its size, she can't muster the same feeling of pure empowered pleasure that the possession of a knife brings to her so effortlessly. This sword may actually be the right length for a figure of her petite nature to handle, but it still feels wrong in her grip. Unnatural.

It hadn't been her first choice, of course. She'd gravitated, upon entering the gym that Monday morning, towards the case of knives so familiar to her - and found that magnetic pull stunted by Calliope. Really, she can hardly remember the last time that she received any positive news from her trainer. Who insisted that she train with a partner. Who mandated that that partner be Cato. Who redirected her over to the selection of swords, claiming that it would benefit her to develop greater versatility with weapons.

Right. Spend several years yelling at trainees about the importance of specialization - an understandable insistence, considering that the hunger games tributes with a trademark weapon routinely seem to prove the most memorable - and then reprimand them for not having a better range. Clove rolls her eyes. Because that makes so much sense.

Cato saunters over to their designated area of the gym, interrupting her introspection. It's striking how at ease he looks with his sword. He carries it as if it's just another limb on his body, not a separate entity at all, but something essential, something that should have been connected to him from birth. She imagines that she does not look so very different when holding a knife.

"You're screwed if the best strategy you can come up with is glaring at your sword." Cato smirks at her. "Believe it or not, that typically doesn't help."

She looks up at him sweetly. "You mean as you proved so clearly last week with the hole you tried to bore through your knife?" An attempt that had, not surprisingly, done absolutely nothing to improve his knife-throwing abilities.

A feral grin is the only response she receives. It speaks volumes. It speaks of his numerous failed efforts with her knives, the varied taunts she'd thrown at him.

_Your turn_.

* * *

And it is, as it turns out, her turn. To lose. Repeatedly.

* * *

The title of "cafeteria" is not an entirely apt name for the room on which the Academy bestows it. But since "room with a bunch of tables crammed into it" would be neither a practical nor a particularly attractive name, it has to do.

The plate of lunch sitting before her on the small circular table - that, like Medea, although technically public property, has become indisputably hers and, as such, open to no one else - presents nothing that she has any desire whatsoever to eat. It's the same lunch that she eats almost daily, enjoys consistently, and all it takes right now is a look at the familiar salad for her to grow nauseous. That's not saying much, though. Clove is fairly certain that even the sight of one of the chocolate bars she keeps stocked in her room would sicken her at the moment.

Her eyes, filled with frigid acid, flit over to _him_, his crowded table, the gratingly brash sound of his voice.

It would be a lie to say that Cato's victories in general are responsible for stirring such a fierce hatred in her. She actually finds them rather amusing, most of the time. The dark haired boy whose blood he'd been so intent on drawing the week before walks by her table and she can't help but think that, even if she hadn't had a hand in overpowering him, his defeat might have been satisfying to watch. Satisfying because she had beat Cato before. Because this massive figure had failed where she had succeeded. Which, really, meant that Cato's victory was her own.

So, it's not Cato's ability to win that leave her so agitated, that leaves her fingers wrapped around her fork in such a tense, strangling grasp that it would go limp and blue from the pressure were it a human neck rather than a utensil. Just the fact that he won against her. Several times. And that it will probably happen again when they return to the gym in less than a half hour.

The irony doesn't fail to strike her. That when she picks up a sword, vulnerability seems to jump into her arms as well. With its blunt mass and keen sharpness, the blade should make her feel more powerful than even a knife. It would be the most logical way of making up for her unimpressive size.

And yet she's never felt less natural, less lithe, than when handling Cato's favorite weapon.

A leaf of lettuce receives the stab wound she's failed to inflict on him that day.

* * *

Busy as she is attempting the murder of her salad, Clove misses the way that Gregoric's eyes linger on her, the way that Cato's posture loses some of its idle satisfaction.

* * *

The padded floor of the gym should be more heavily padded. This is the impression that Clove garners as her body thuds against it for what feels like the hundredth time that day, Cato's victorious figure looming above her with his sword to her chest, her own knocked aside by the force of his last blow.

She holds back a grimace at the ache biting at her back, cinching her lips closed. His bright blue eyes fix down upon her defeated form as if waiting for some sort of acknowledgement of his triumph.

Gaze blank. Mouth tight. Muscles stiff. It's not happening.

Her breath catches as he lazily maneuvers the tip of his sword from its place over her chest to her neck; he teases it in a soft drag along her collar bone, too lightly to draw blood but too closely to allow for any delusion of innocuousness. A forcefully suppressed shiver gnaws at her skin in response to the blade's cool pressure. Icicles seem to form in the path it leaves against the flushed pink surface of her sweat covered, exertion-heated skin.

"You know," he says from above her, his casual voice leaving her with the desire to lash out and tear her bared teeth into any part of him she can reach, "most people would make some sort of acknowledgement of my handiness with a sword right about now."

She rolls her eyes. "Let me guess. I should start referring to you as master of the universe?"

He smirks. "No need to go to extremes. Just master would be fine."

Clove is fairly certain that she likes him more when he's murderously angry. At least then he's usually too busy snarling or growling or swearing to form coherent sentences. Ignoring the sword point still pressing butterfly kisses against her neck, she pushes up onto her feet. The blade's tip nicks her slightly in the process, leaving behind a thin mark of red; she's unsure of whether her movement was simply to sudden for him to adjust to suitably or if the mark was left purposefully. If he's like her. If he enjoys seeing proof of his triumphs.

Judging by the smug tilt that takes hold of his mouth as he regards the pathetic wound, she'd be willing to bet on the latter. His smugness, however, mutates into suspicion as she dons a sweet, if thin-lipped, smile. It takes effort, furious and humiliated as she is, to calm herself so, but she manages. Clove is nothing if not able to take on the appearance of collection.

"I think you know better than to delude yourself into thinking that will happen. Ever." Leaning down, she picks up her lost weapon. "I'll give you that you're good with a sword, though."

Blunt suspicion. He practically emanates the emotion. That's something at least. Not a month ago, she'd have assumed that his ego was too inflated to recognize a counterfeit compliment.

"It must be nice," she continues, playing at innocence. "Being able to use that big, hard blade." Clove comes as close to giggling as she is physically able. Which isn't, as it turns out, very close at all (actually, it's a barely in a mile's radius). "Doesn't seem at all like something that someone would do to… I don't know. Overcompensate."

The gratification of having a companion in her rage is immediate. He grounds out, "Believe me, I don't have to overcompensate for anything."

"Right. Of course not."

Eager to secure her words a position as the last spoken between them, she turns around to return her sword to its wall. Lips quirking, she can't help but consider the poetry of the moment when a nearby timer chimes, signaling the end of the training day. Gruff fingers curl around her wrist, twisting her back around. Of course. What would Cato know about poetry.

His cerulean eyes are still bright as they gleam down at her from his tall stature, but in a manner altered from their glow of conquest. They're darker now. Harder. And, somewhat alarmingly, tautly amused.

"Careful, little girl. Don't start games you're not ready to play."

Oh, please. She tears her arm out of his grip, expending no small amount of energy to do so. "Somehow, I'm not worried."

This time she manages to stalk away, leaving the glaring boy behind, and retreating into her beloved solitude.

Or that's how things _should_ happen.

* * *

Cato's never been much of a fan of Mondays, but he's willing to make an exception for this one. Scanning her retreating form, he regards Clove with no small amount of amusement. For such a lethal girl, she's fucking terrible with a sword.

His feet are already thudding after her in the direction of the sword station when someone, bronze haired, muscular, and entirely familiar falls into step with him.

"She looked pissed," Achates notes with a nod in Clove's direction.

Cato smirks at the sight of the scowling girl who currently looks to be threatening to stab a scrawny, altogether pathetically built boy who accidentally stepped on her foot.

There are at least three trainers in a yard's distance but the boy looks worried. Cato considers this with a quick shrug. Probably for good reason.

Still, he waves away his friend's observation. "Clove's always pissed."

"Yeah, you seem to have a real talent for setting her off." The grin tugging at his lips is the only indication that Achates has not suddenly become deadly serious as he puts a hand on Cato's shoulder. "We should talk about these suicidal impulses of yours at some point, man."

Cato throws the hand off, shaking his head before pausing. The burgeoning chuckle dies in his throat.

Gregoric, in the last minute, had fallen into step with Clove. His jaw clenches as Rex's words, although as idiotic as everything else that departs from his mouth, tease the fringes of his mind, throw themselves front and center. Cato already knew that Gregoric wanted her as a training partner. He just didn't plan on Clove being this fucking furious at him when he approached her. Gregoric clearly did.

Cato doesn't bother to say anything more before pounding away towards them.

* * *

To Cato's credit, he is, surprisingly, not the next one to disturb her. As she restores her sword to its place, Clove feels a large figure move beside her. His proximity, although annoying, fails to strike her at first, clustered as the groups of other sword-borrowing trainees are around the blades' home. It's not until she realizes that he's moving with her towards the wall against which she left her gym bag that she chooses to expend the energy necessary to examine him. Clove shifts her gaze over to him wearily as she reaches down to retrieve her water bottle. Her fingers curl around its coldness as she brings it down to the pulse of her wrist in an attempt to cool herself.

She keeps staring at him, a dark haired boy she recognizes as Cato's dagger glaring opponent from the other day, Gregoric, but refuses to say anything. He's the one who's invaded her space. If he's looking to prolong the encounter - God, she hopes not - he'll have to do so himself. Honestly, from the way he's looking at her, expectant and distinctly arrogant, it's not hard to tell that he thinks she should be falling over herself to make conversation with him. As if she needs another sword-using, smirk-wearing idiot to deal with.

Finally seeming to realize that Clove has no inclination whatsoever to call her vocal chords into use, he speaks. "Hey there," he says, flashing her a grin that she thinks too generic to pass as charming. "I don't think we've met. My-"

"We have," she cuts him off, her words as sharp as one of her beloved knives. "Last Friday." Bringing the bottle up to her lips, she takes a long gulp of its contents before continuing. "You might remember. Cato and I were kicking your ass at the time."

"I remember." Irritation plays briefly on his face before he covers it with a grin. "I just thought I'd introduce myself." He extends his hand, not offering it, but simply grabbing at her own with his fingers, leaving her with no other choice than to shake the proffered appendage. "Gregoric Aldrin."

Clove makes sure to scrape her sharp fingernails against the tender flesh of his palm when she frees her hand. "Oh, believe me," she says, her voice sugarcoated. "I've already gotten all the introduction I need."

It's more blatant on his features now, the aggravation. His grin is gone, grounded away into a scowl, and his fists are clenched, one of them around the hilt of the sword that he didn't bother to put away, having opted, apparently, to stalk her instead. He seems to be thick enough to think that it will intimidate her. Which is just moronic, really, since it's not as though he could get away with using it on her right now.

The corners of his lips plunge even lower when a set of thudding footsteps alert them to another incoming figure. It alarms her slightly that, with all the time she's spent with Cato in the last few weeks, the cadence of his walk alone is more than enough to inform her of his identity.

"Aldrin," he nods. Crossing her arms, Clove rolls her eyes. Of course he too would still be holding a sword. She had been - mostly - joking when she'd suggested that his predilection for large weaponry was rooted in some deficit in masculinity. As anti-social as she may be, after all, she's neither deaf nor ignorant, and it's not any hushed secret that Cato has slept with most of the girls in their level, that he's beaten most of the males into bloody mockeries. Now, though, as she looks between the two boys, she's less certain. Maybe it is all testosterone induced.

Gregoric shoots him a smile identical to the bullshit one he'd given her earlier, save for the hints of malice that crack through his current expression. "You need something, Ludwig?"

Cato doesn't bother with the false grin, nor with the flimsy attempt at pleasantries. Actually, he doesn't bother to respond to Gregoric at all. He simply turns to Clove. "You ready?"

She stares. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

One of his light eyebrows arches. "I'm walking you home."

Apparently, he's not bothering with honesty at the moment either. Clove opens her mouth to protest, but finds him slinging her bag over his shoulder and pulling her away from Gregoric before she can manage.

"No, you're not," she hisses, attempting to yank her arm out of his grasp. Cato ignores her, putting away his sword before continuing to drag her out of the room - which doesn't actually take much effort, considering that Clove has, for the moment, stopped fighting and feigned consent. The last thing she needs after Cato's stream of very visible victories in their last several fights is to appear weak, to demonstrate to the entire room that her training partner has an infuriating habit of grabbing her whenever pleases and that she doesn't always have the physical strength to shake him off with immediate ease. So she dons her practiced look of collection.

Until they're outside.

Mustering all of the force that she can, Clove frees herself from his grip. "I swear, if you grab me one more time, I _will_ cut your hand off." Or maybe his fingers, one by one, just to prolong the experience.

He ignores her threat, likely too focused on growling to register the words. "What did he say to you?"

"Oh, we had a nice chat about the latest fashion trends in the Capitol," she spats with sarcasm before reverting to her normal, albeit enraged, tone. "What do you think we talked about. Nothing. He literally said nothing."

This fails to convince Cato. "Nothing doesn't usually require words."

Or maybe she'll just slice his fingers off for the fun of it. She crosses her arms. "I don't see how this concerns you at all." The syllables fall from her lips with a forced indolence that does nothing to improve Cato's mood.

He snaps in every sense of the word, his features contorting into a scarlet rage. "If you're going to request a fucking partner transfer, it concerns me."

Confusion momentarily overpowers Clove's severe irritation. "If I'm - I - what the hell are you talking about?" It's official, Clove thinks. Cato's stupidity has rendered her utterly stupid.

Thankfully, her blatant bewilderment seems to break through his illogical fury. "He wants you as a training partner," he says, his suddenly emotionless voice a stark contrast to his former rage.

Clove regards him with disbelief. "And you thought I would just go along with that?" He opens his mouth to respond, futilely as it turns out, since she isn't anywhere near finished. "That I can't handle you?" she demands. "That I would need to downgrade to the moron that you beat in a fight less than a week ago?" Hardly aware of herself, she claws her fingernails against into the rigidness of his right cheekbone, wreaking a thin crevice of blood into his skin. "You can call me 'little girl' all you want, but I'm not that fucking weak!" She's not weak. He might have destroyed her today, proven her sword skills to be pathetic, but she is not weak. She's not weaker than him. She's not. Clove exhales deeply as she lowers the hand, which had, to that point, remained dangling in midair near his face. Most people are, she'll admit, but not her. She refusesto be.

Cato remains silent for a moment after that. He wipes away the streaming tear of blood which mars the otherwise bronzed hue of his face absentmindedly. Clove hardly realizes that her own fingertips have begun tracing the mark left by his sword on the flesh right below her collarbone as others might play with a pendant. Her fury, intense in fervor if not volume, given that her voice never rose above a low, heated hiss, at least succeeded in abating some of the anger that had spent the majority of the day building its way up through her, infecting her blood, clouding her eyesight. The calm that washes through her now is refreshingly genuine. Left sober, her intoxicating anger having dissipated, she wonders if he'll strike her. Almost hopes he will.

He stole her control, stripped her down to a nude mess of rage. The last thing she wants is to see him respond with _her _stoicism.

When he finally does react, she can't help but roll her eyes. Of course. She should have known that he'd opt for his own trademark. A fetus smirk grows before her eyes over Cato's formerly blank features. "Gregoric would be a downgrade, wouldn't he."

Clove stares at him, unable to decide whether she should be relieved or disgusted. "Really?" she asks incredulously. "Out of everything I just said, _that's_ what you're going to focus on?"

As a note of seriousness tempers his smirk, she knows that she should feel assuaged, glad to watch the evidence of his satisfaction with her little break down fall away from his face. She doesn't.

Tension immediately takes hold of her body, her arms, her legs, her spine, when he cranes his head down near her own. "Don't you think," his breath warms her left earlobe, "that if I thought you were weak, I'd be looking to give you to Gregoric?"

She's fairly certain that it would require less exertion for her to run ten miles than to remain as still as she forces herself to right then.

_Don't back away_.

So she snaps at him instead. "I would never let anyone just _give_-"

"Believe me, little girl," he continues, ignoring her completely, "if I thought you were weak, I wouldn't bother with you."

The words should revolt her. Clove can't think of a time that someone has ever spoken to her so objectifying (actually, she can't even think of anyone else who _would_).

And yet they don't leave her with any desire to dismember the blonde in front of her limb by limb. Strange.

He grins then and she's relieved to feel him pull back to his former distance. "I mean, you're weaker than me, but I wouldn't worry too much about that. Just about everyone is."

And it's back. In spades.

"Whatever you need to think to sleep at night," she replies sweetly before extending her arm out to grab at the strap of her bag. "Now, give me my bag. I'm leaving." Hanging off his shoulder, it seems to tease her. Clove grits her teeth as she reaches up, spending an embarrassing amount of muscle energy to attempt to yank it off of his shoulder - and then, just as her finger tips manage to finally brush the sack's surface, he shrugs away.

He raises an eyebrow at her that speaks of more smugness than confusion. "Walking you home, remember?"

"No. You're really not." Resting against her sides, her fists clench and unclench, longing more than anything for a knife. She can picture how it would feel in her hand, how the light would skate across its shiny blade. The slickness of Cato's warm blood crimson against its surface.

He begins walking away, her bag undulating against his back with each sauntered step.

Clove grits her teeth. He's _not_.

* * *

He does, of course, end up walking her home. Cato grins as he watches Clove and her burning resentment retreat through her front door. Lingering there, in front of her dried-out green yard, he allows his grin to grow. It's almost entertaining how deeply his presence seems to stir her temper. Satisfying, even.

Moving away a few moments later, Cato strokes the scratch her desperate, frenzied fingernails had wrenched into his face earlier. Frenzied. She doesn't seem like the type to have ever been frenzied in her life; never has been, in front of him. He's seen her violent, sure. Angry, plenty. Annoyed, most of the time. Her blood-seeking nails, though, were the first indication that he'd ever received that his training partner even could loose control, that the little girl could break, could shatter like glass into shards more dangerous than their original, untouched form.

And he liked it.

* * *

If Calliope doesn't let her use a fucking knife this morning, then Clove thinks she might alter her usual sword-fighting lesson plan - 'alter' as in, rather than walking away to find Cato, stabbing her trainer repeatedly in a variety of places, preferably in an equally various number of ways. The image of swiping a blade across Calliope's neck has been wrapping itself into her thoughts all night, all morning, all month, really. The bitch does keep saying that more practice would benefit her. And Clove's fairly certain that, although also grounds for arrest, that _would_ count as a training exercise. Somewhat.

Walking towards her front door, Clove grabs her bag before pulling at her dark chocolate ponytail, raising it, tightening it. She's never been one to put much time into her appearance - not for training, at least, of all things - but she does take care to keep her hair entirely out of her face, daily securing it back in an almost painful hold. Preoccupied as she is with a few wanton strands, it takes her a few seconds longer than it might usually to perceive the figure sprawled lazily across her front porch.

Clove's eyes narrow. This had to be a sick joke. It was that simple. Maybe a punishment of some deranged kind.

Although he must have heard her open the door, must be aware of her arrival, Cato takes his time turning around to greet her scathing look. Nonchalantly, as if he spends every morning lounging on her doorstep, he gathers himself up. "Running late today?"

Scowling so deeply that the plunged ends of her lips are almost in pain, she glares at him. "Leave. Now."

Which, as it turns out, wasn't the best choice of words, considering that they both have to leave at the moment, and to go to the same place. Cato doesn't bother to remind her of this, though. He just clings to her pace, meeting her every stride, leaving her with no other choice but to walk with him.

"Do you have some kind of death wish?" she demands. "Honestly, do you get off on verbal abuse or something?"

Cato smirks. "As if anyone could kill me."

Insane. He is honestly insane. Possibly more so than she is.

* * *

Clove walks outside the next morning warily. With good reason. Blonde hair glints before her in the sun.

Apparently, he really does have a death wish.

(Unfortunately, she doesn't think that she'll be able to grant it that morning and still arrive to the Academy on time, so she ends up just walking with instead.)

* * *

**Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this and also to everyone who reviewed the last chapter: TheToothFairy92, Ombre de la Lune, TotalFangirl13, Lexi, clove and cato, Jesus the Gardener, Undulation of Cynical Suicide, Marina, and luvxas37! **

**I'm really sorry that this chapter took me such a long time to post. For some reason, I had a more difficult time writing it... Actually, I'm still not really sure what I think of it, so, I'd really appreciate any feedback that you might have time to leave. Thanks for reading! :)**


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

Clove had never much minded the steepness of the hill, nor the challenge of its climb. Sitting on its tip, with her knees to her chest, she's even glad of it - the solitude offered by the hilltop as a result, the privacy.

But, then again, its vacant state might have more to do with the fact that the hour hand of her watch has barely ticked to five o'clock in the morning than with the mount's rocky slope.

The sun, still shy, has yet to illuminate much of the landscape beneath her, the features of District Two rendered miniscule by her near bird's eye view. Clove narrows her eyes at the toy houses, the few - no doubt sleepy-eyed - dollish figures who have risen. Even the quarry, for all its noise and size, all of the lives that depend upon it, looks inconsequential from her present position.

Objects that she can manipulate. That's how they've always struck her from here, what has always added to her hill's appeal.

With a sigh, Clove lowers herself further into the unkempt grass until her body is flat against the ground and the crisp green blades that had been behind her are flattened as well, by the weight of her back. She'd woken up early that morning, at three o'clock. An irritating irregularity that had left her grounding her eyelids shut in an attempt to grab hold of sleep once again; the last thing she needed was to find it creeping back into her system earlier than usual, before she had wound up her day at the Academy. Exhaustion and knife-throwing did not happen to be the best of combinations. Sword-fighting and sleepiness, she refused to even contemplate.

It took her almost an hour to accept the fact that, no matter how tightly she clenched her eyes closed, how still she lay, how slow she brought her breathing, this was simply going to be one of those strange, greedy dawns that stole sleep away from her. Once she'd come to that realization, there hadn't seemed to be much of a point to wasting her time by lazing restlessly in bed.

Hence the early morning field trip.

Cato had factored into her decision as well, of course. The relish of the thought of his inevitable irritation if she were to have left before he arrived at her house this morning - as he still, to her severe annoyance, seemed intent on persisting - had been the selling point that had finally torn her away from her mattress.

Clove pulls her dagger out from its sheath, revolving it in her fingers for a while as she bides her time before sparing her watch another glance.

5:30 AM.

A smirk kindles on her lips. Cato will likely be approaching her porch soon, to lounge about while he waits for her. And then, likely, to stomp about once its dawns upon his caveman brain that she is not actually there to wait for.

Stowing her dagger away again, Clove slowly raises herself into a standing position before beginning the trek down her hill. It's a pity that she won't be there to see his rage. She imagines it will be an entertaining sight.

* * *

It's only 5:45 AM, still fifteen minutes before training officially starts, when Clove enters the near empty gym. Ignoring the few figures scattered around the room, her pale blue eyes shift automatically over to the case of knives, as though directed there by gravity. Untouched. Every blade still in place. She embraces the handle of one that she's named "Ismene" with her fingers before claiming her in a firm grasp. Not that anyone would dare to take one of _hers_.

She never arrives at the Academy late, exactly, but it's still been a while since found herself within its walls this early. Or maybe just this solitarily. The entire training partner nightmare had made Cato a more or less permanent fixture at her side during the training day. Not now, though. Not while he's undoubtedly emitting a spat stream of curses under his breath as he notices her absence. The idea is almost enough to leave her in a good mood, to make up for her unwelcome early rising. Exacerbating Cato's anger, admittedly, might not be the wisest of hobbies, but it's proven to be a fairly enjoyable one so far.

A smile curves onto her face as she moves over to the knife station and thoughts of Cato's ire fall away into the spaces under the floorboards of her mind. Entirely empty. Entirely hers. As it should be.

The correct stance comes easily to her, thoughtlessly, requiring no more effort than an inhaled or exhaled breath. Eyes narrowing in delight, she begins. Her knife hits the target again and again as she warms up, then again and again once she backs further away. She loses track of how many times the blade flies in a controlled gait from her grip, loses everything - until someone walks in front of her.

Clove regards the intruder with no small amount of resentment, her scowl blatant and her arms crossing themselves. She almost regrets that he was circumspect enough to minutely avoid her knife's path. It's never been attempted, to her knowledge, but she suspects that she couldn't be censured for stabbing someone in the face if the victim in question could be proven to have been enough of an idiot to step in front of her knife.

The Academy has never had much more of a tolerance for utter moronity than she does.

"I suggest you move," she says flatly. "Unless you're looking to investigate a future as a target board."

Gregoric grins at her, ignoring the blunt hostility emanating from her petite form. "You're pretty good with those knives."

Clove stares at him. "I know." It's a fairly obvious fact. She's made more than a dozen perfect shots in a row.

She tenses as he increases their proximity in the same irritating manner that Cato often likes to. An attempt to intimidate her, she suspects. Or at least discomfort her. Setting her chin higher in the air, she meets his gaze steadily.

"Maybe you could give me some private lessons sometime," Gregoric says to her, still grinning as he runs a hand through his black coffee curls. It's not a kind grin, which is no surprise, really, since smiles of that sort are rarely seen in the Academy, would probably not be tolerated if they were. It's not bloodthirsty, though, either, not like the ones that she and Cato wear at times (usually not at the _same_ time, of course, given that they're usually cast at the other's expense). This is almost flirtatious. Or an attempt at it, at least.

Any attempt at levelness slips from her features as she considers the fact that this boy may actually be even more of an idiot than Cato. Which, really, is somewhat inspiring, considering that she hadn't even known that such a feat was possible. "Why would I do that?"

His cocky demeanor falters slightly at her clear disgusted bewilderment, but he regains it quickly as he moves a hand to stroke her arm. "I'd make it worth your-"

This time she does shift away from him, although she doesn't drop her glare. "I don't want you as a training partner." It's a direct statement, she'll admit, but subtly holds no allure whatsoever to her at the moment. What does is a return to uninterrupted quality time with her knives.

He blinks, this time failing to maintain his confident composure. "I-"

"Really. I would rather have that District Six tribute Titus. And he's not only a cannibal, but also happens to be dead."

Grin completely gone now, Gregoric's lips pinch together. Clove rolls her eyes. She seems to have angered him. Whether it has to do with her apparent habit of cutting him off or her less than complimentary words, she's unsure, but she hopes that he realizes that there is a solution. It centers around him walking away so that she can return to _throwing her knives_.

Finally regaining coherency, he tilts his head at her. "And here I thought you were different." If this is his attempt at engaging her in the conversation, she can't help but think that it's a slightly pathetic one. He doesn't, however, seem to expect a reply from her. "But I guess you're nothing but another one of Cato's lovesick stalkers."

Ice cold fury infects her blood, prompting her to pose her knife against his neck in the quickest snap of a motion. Still, she manages to don a sweet smile. "No. Just not one of yours."

The muscles of his throat are tense as she remains still, keeping her knife's edge held hard against his jugular in an unnecessary linger. Finally, Clove lowers her arm in the most controlled of motions. "Now, leave."

He tells her that he'll talk to her later. She truly hopes not.

* * *

By the time that Cato approaches her, looking distinctly aggravated with his jaw clenched and his fists rigid, Clove has just managed to reenter her zone of violent, bloody-minded meditation. She pauses at his arrival, slightly disappointed that he didn't come as close to her knife's trajectory as Gregoric did, to interrupting its flight with his forehead or cheek or maybe one of his bright blue eyes.

Then again, she reconsiders, his face might be scratched up enough as it is.

The ghosts of her nails haunt his right cheek. Faint white marks left behind by her fury. They're barely noticeable at this point, gone, really, and yet Clove can't spare Cato a glance without narrowing her eyes at their near invisible jaggedness, without allowing their shades to possess her with an irritation-marred satisfaction. She's always appreciated the element of surprise. Somehow, however, it feels like less of a victory when the attack manages to shock her just as fully as it does her victim. Since that afternoon, she's vowed that the next time she tries to slice up his face, the attack will be planned and, preferably, conducted with a knife. The next time, she'll make it slow.

So maybe it's a good thing that he stays a reasonable distance away her until Ismene hits her target. Although amusing, the pleasure would have been fairly short lived.

Clove looks over at him with an expression of faux innocence as she goes to retrieve her knife. "Running late?" she asks, repeating his words from the other day mockingly.

The coldness in his grin is staggering. "Got held up."

"That must have been terribly inconvenient." She cocks her head to the side, fighting to keep her smile sympathetic. "I hope you didn't get in too much trouble when you came in." Idly, the question of how many tender red whip marks Julius had inflicted on his back for the transgression tugs at her mind. At least three, she supposes.

He snaps Ismene away from the target board before she can reach it. "I wouldn't worry about me." The statement itself is innocuous itself, but Clove gets the impression that she's supposed to infer from it a suggestion that she begin worrying more about herself. Her eyes narrow at him. Not likely.

"What a relief." She holds her hand out. "My knife?"

Its return leaves her glaring at a suddenly smug Cato, a part of her furious, another fascinated. Edged back into her grasp, Ismene, clad in Clove's own blood, glints slickly up at her.

She's never been cut by her own knife before.

* * *

That seems to put him in a better mood for the rest of the day, cutting her. She has to admit, as she walks over to Calliope's beckoning figure, that she's a bit surprised. Cato usually seems prone to go for the more blunt attacks, the ones that would not be completely surprising were they to come from a savage. This one was more subtle, something that she might do - actually, she's fairly certain that it's something she _has _done before.

If it wasn't for the fact that her dominant hand, although only briefly, lightly, scratched by the blade, still hasn't recovered the rhythm that it found throwing knives earlier that morning, she might be somewhat impressed.

Making her way over to her trainer, she stares at the hard-looking, cropped haired woman, not bothering to hide her annoyance at being pulled away from practice. Even if it means finding herself with a temporary reprieve from Cato.

If Calliope notices her barefaced impatience - and Clove assumes that she does, considering that even the one-eyed stray dog that wanders around town could probably manage to do so - she doesn't bother to acknowledge it. "Clove," she greets her. "Good. I have something to discuss with you."

It takes actual physical effort to keep her countenance neutral, to restrain herself from rolling her eyes, to bite back the urge to point out the obviousness of that observation. She's actually fairly curious as to what this might be about, and doesn't feel particularly inclined to suffer her way through a pointless censure before finding out. "Yes?" Judging by the way that Cato's eyes have attached themselves to her back, she guesses that she's not the only one intrigued.

At least she can trust that Calliope will go straight for the point; her trainer has, thankfully, never been one to file away time with unnecessary civilities. It may be her only redeeming quality.

"I recently received a request for you as a training partner."

If she's expected to show shock at the news, Clove fails utterly. She crosses her arms. "I'm not working with Gregoric Aldrin."

Calliope, on the other hand, succeeds quite well in conveying some surprise. "The boy already approached you?"

Clove shrugs. "I'm not interested." She'd thought about it momentarily, of course, given the matter more consideration that she's currently willing to expose. Cato, after all, had seemed absolutely furious at the idea of her requesting a transfer. That alone would give at least partial merit to any idea.

But, ultimately, the only time that she had seen Gregoric and Cato fight, Cato had won. Which meant that, if she were to leave him for his defeated opponent, she'd be choosing the apparent weaker of the two. That she was weaker. An unacceptable notion.

Calliope regards her bemusedly. "And I was under the impression that you were displeased by your current training partner."

Clove's eyes flash over to Cato and his striking size, palpable brutality. "Oh, I am."

* * *

By the time that Calliope releases her, the gym is clearing and trainees are departing for the day. It comes as somewhat of a relief to Clove, that, despite her early rise that morning, she feels no more weary than usual. She won't be able to afford to let such trivial matters as exhaustion affect her once she's selected to be a tribute for the hunger games. Her fist clenches around Ismene. And she _will _be selected. Maybe not this year, much to her chagrin, since fifteen year olds rarely seem to receive such an honor, but soon. She's stabbed, hit, kicked, sliced, scratched, performed any number of very violent actions, but never killed before. Clove thinks that she'll be good at it. A feral smile pulls at her lips. She thinks that she'll enjoy it.

"This can't be good." Her mouth goes limp at Cato's arrival. Down-turned at the sight of her hostage bag on his shoulders.

"I agree. Nothing good can possibly come of the fact that you've stolen my bag again."

A smirk. "I was actually talking about the way that you're smiling."

Clove considers this. Surprisingly perceptive. "I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but people smile for completely inane reasons all the time." They've departed the austere walls of the Academy at this point, and begun walking towards Clove's house, in a manner almost too routine for either to take much notice of.

He snorts. "You're not people."

"True." For some reason, she finds that comment strangely gratifying.

"So, you're either suffering from some disease that causes you to lose control of your facial muscles or you were just given permission to kill." He pauses before, suddenly intent, asking, "You weren't, were you?"

She, admittedly, can understand his tension. It does happen, after all, each year. Several of the most talented trainees do get pulled aside, told that they'll be undergoing a special exercise. The entire matter is naturally rather clandestine, but the trainers can't keep them from noticing the shipment of criminals sentenced to death by the Capitol who arrive almost simultaneously and don't appear to ever leave.

Just the thought leaves her breathless.

Deciding to play with him, though, she ignores his actual question. "If I was worried about my health, I really don't think that Calliope would be the best choice of physicians."

"_Given permission to kill_."

"Oh, that. No. Unfortunately."

The relief on his features is almost tangible. Again understandably. She imagines he must be counting on getting that permission himself this year. Two years older than her, his time at the Academy has deteriorated significantly. And most of the chosen are seventeen or eighteen. Clove vaguely recalls hearing that he's accumulated the former amount of years.

The knowledge that he'll likely get to experience a kill before her brings the most bitter of grimaces to her face, the most fervent of desires to see him stripped of his relief.

And so Clove doesn't alter her pace or tone when she speaks, opting instead to maintain the most casual of appearances. "Calliope just wanted to tell me that Gregoric officially requested me as his training partner." She pretends not to notice the way that just the name of his rival is enough to render Cato uncharacteristically stiff, and continues on with a façade of obliviousness. "Must have been before this morning."

Cato's voice resounds as tautly as she has ever heard it before when he responds, his words quick and tight with anger. "This morning?"

"When Gregoric and I were settling everything," she clarifies flippantly. "I really wasn't aware that the matter required much negotiation afterwards. We figured everything out." Well, she figured everything out. He didn't actually have much input.

She's pleased to observe that his halted form looks about ready to snap. "You were with Gregoric this morning," he grounds out, undoubtedly more keenly aware of the aching marks on his back than ever.

She shrugs. "I couldn't sleep. He was there."

Rigid bark suddenly finds itself strangled against her back when Cato's hulking body corners her against a tree. "Where did you say he was, little girl?"

The nickname discomforts her more than the tree's roughness. So she continues. "Well, he told me that he thought that we should spend some time together in private."

She hates herself for her the slight gasp that slips free from her lips when his hands, still as annoyingly large as ever, maneuver her bare shoulders into the bark, forcefully enough, deeply enough, to line her skin with splinters.

Bright eyes. Protruding veins. Snarl-claimed mouth. Clove decides that she's made him angry enough. "I told him to leave me alone, of course."

"Was that before or after you fucked him?" His grip on her doesn't loosen.

Clove pauses in consideration. "Technically before. Although, neither really apply since I didn't sleep with him. Strangely, I've never felt particularly inclined to make myself a subject of voyeurism."

She's unsure of whether it's will or confusion that loosens his hold upon her upper body, but takes the opportunity to move away from him regardless. When several moments of silence span between them, Clove opens her mouth again. "Voyeurism. It's when people watch while-"

Anger, with Cato, always manages to beat bewilderment. "I know what fucking voyeurism is."

"Right. You would."

He glares at her in a silent demand for an explanation. Clove obliges him only because exhaustion has finally managed to make a gain on her in the short time since they've left the Academy and she doesn't feel like prolonging this game. "By 'there,' I meant that he was in the gym when I showed up this morning."

"The gym," he repeats flatly.

"Yes. Also, you're an idiot if you think, after my fit from the other day, that I'd request a transfer. Honestly."

They've begun drifting towards her house again before he replies. Judging by the way that his face keeps contorting into somewhat amusing spasm, she'd guess that he's warring between severe annoyance and satisfaction. When Cato chuckles, it becomes clear that he chose the latter.

"And how did Gregoric take that news?"

Clove frowns at the memory. "He accused me of being in love with you."

The idea seems to strike the blonde as much more amusing than it does her. "Badly then." And the smirk has returned.

"You have no idea."

They walk in silence for a while from there, a quiet for which her suddenly wearied mind is thankful. It's not until they arrive at her house that he speaks again. "And are you?"

She blinks at him. "I don't think that counts as an actual question. I'll need more to go off than that."

Leaning against one of her windows, he grins, providing yet more evidence of his already amply apparent bipolar condition. "In love with me. Most girls are."

A shrug seizes her shoulders. "Blonde hair is overrated. I prefer brunettes." It's a lie, of course, as Clove has never actually considered what hair color she finds particularly attractive. Out of all the factors there are to weight in a person, it strikes her as a laughably inconsequential bit, given that it has no impact whatsoever on a person's prowess in combat. Still, she half expects the statement to set Cato off. Everything seems to.

Possibly, though, having realized the foolishness of taking her every word seriously, he's moved onto peering through the window currently serving as home to his mass, and inspecting her once again empty house. Raising an eyebrow, he asks, "Are your parents invisible or just gone?"

Clove's eyes narrow. "Both," she says in a clipped manner that speaks for itself in turning away further comments. One dead, the other districts away. They're as good as. Her lips cinch shut though as she twists her key into the lock of her door. Cato doesn't get to hear about that, though. He doesn't get to hear the story of the man who lost his wife to the birth of a child of the wrong gender, or the unusual circumstances that stripped him from her life. Not many peacekeepers are allowed to continue working through marriage. He became, after her mother's death, a rare exception. And she's glad of it.

She's almost through the door when she remembers that her bag is still slung over his shoulder. Turning around to retrieve it, she finds herself greeted by the sight of her training partner standing before her with amused expectancy. He traps her hand when she moves to reclaim her fitness bag's strap. "Touch Gregoric," he murmurs through a low voice, "and you won't be able to throw knives again for a long time."

Clove tears herself, as well as the sack, away before resuming her trip into the front hall.

He should know better than to challenge her.

* * *

**Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this so far! Especially to my amazing reviewers: too lazy to log in, ff, gryffindorforever, baristababy, Marina, luvxas37, and Orange Pudding. I really appreciate the time that you took to comment :) **


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

If there is one thing that Cato can comprehend, it's rules. Stripped of all else, his every defining detail, - his strength, his looks, his libido - his grasp of those would remain. The Capitol's rules. The Academy's. His family's. His own.

This is why he doesn't feel guilty for forcing Andromeda out of his bed at two in the morning. He doesn't sleep with other people. Fucks them, sure. He has no qualms there. It's the mixing of sex with that dangerously vulnerable state of surrender known as sleep that he knows better than to practice, that he forbids himself from ever trying.

One of his rules.

Andie knows this of course. She knows his limits just as well as any of the girls he takes to bed. Still, her long bronzed legs attempt to entwine with his own as her exhausted face makes a gentle dive for his chest. Cato rolls his eyes. Not that she'll ever acknowledge them.

"C'mon, Andie," his lips tease the words into the plump skin of her right breast. "We've got training tomorrow." Faded whip marks still nip painfully at the flesh on his back, reminding him of just how much he doesn't want to be late again.

Her blonde curls tremble as she turns her head back and forth, attempting to toss his dismissal out of her ears like a dog might shake drops of water from its coat. He barely notices, too caught up in the images of a dark ponytail, a cruel smirk, that the wounds from his last censure always seem to summon to mind.

Pulling himself away from the golden haired girl's warm, needy body, he regards her more coldly, speaks more harshly, forgetting her body heat and any softness that might have momentarily seeped into him through her embrace. Gone that quickly. Any care for her, any concern.

Andie already knows how little she means to him, though; another fact she chooses not to acknowledge.

"Time for you to go," he says as he jerks the blankets off of her, reminding her of whose bed, whose world, she's attempting to invade.

Goosebumps begin to press themselves onto her skin as she groans at the sudden loss before sitting up languidly, unabashed by her bare body. "Please, Cato…"

Any tenderness she ever knew in him vanishes.

* * *

When Cato wakes up several hours later to the beeping of his 5 AM alarm, even the faintest impression of Andie's lithe body on his mattress has long faded.

The sun's light, although still muted when he departs from his house later that morning, has grown bright enough to leave his blonde hair glinting with gold when Cato steps into its path. Tossing an apple, grabbed from the bowl of fruit that his mother, surprisingly, has maternal instinct enough to leave laying out in the kitchen, up and down in his palm, Cato thuds down the steps of his front porch as he begins the walk to Clove's house.

He doesn't notice when Andie, leaning out of a window from the home directly next to his own, waves, calls his name, half-heartedly asks him to wait for her. Or maybe he does register it on some level. Her desperation. Maybe that's what has left her so dull in his eyes. Locks of hair lighter than even the ones on his own head, eyes greener than the most freshly watered grass, and, still, she's fading. Grey. Boring. Cato has never bothered to see that which he doesn't consider worthy of his attention, and, as if aware of this, she waves her hand quicker and quicker, raises her voice louder and louder, attempting to claw her way back into his line of vision.

Eyes trained ahead, he passes her right by.

* * *

The knife is never in her hands when she falls to sleep. It's close-by, naturally, tucked away underneath a pillow or laying on her bedside table, but never that immediate. Still, the blade almost daily manages to find its way into her grasp by the time that she wakes, proof of her unconscious groping for its handle. For its security. Clove smirks down at the weapon clenched tightly in her fist as her eyes blink open. There had never been any teddy bears or childhood blankets to clutter her bed. She much prefers her chosen substitute.

Silencing her alarm, she restores the knife to its place on her table and slides off of her mattress to begin her short, utilitarian morning ritual - to brush her teeth, take a quick shower, clothe herself in her standard training apparel, tie her hair back into a high ponytail, and so on.

It is the shower, Clove will surmise later, that leads to her downfall. More particularly, it's the volume of the tepid water as it sprays from the shower nozzle onto her soap clad skin. Otherwise, she has no doubt that she would have heard his entrance.

But she didn't. Clove didn't hear; and so, when she makes her way into the kitchen several minutes later, she nearly shrieks at the sight before her. _Shrieks_. She never shrieks, shouldn't. It's not the natural order of things for her to be caught so off guard, seized by such surprise. Then again, though, it's not the natural order of things for Cato to be somehow _in her kitchen _first thing in the morning either.

"Cato!"

His massive figure is busy shuffling through her cabinets, bouncing what looks to be a blushing red apple up and down in his palm, when she first sees him. A smirk tugs at his lips as he turns his head to reply to her exasperated shock. "Morning," he says, sounding smug. "Where do you keep your protein supplements?"

Clove stares at him briefly before shaking her head and storming over to him. "How the hell did you get in here?" she demands. "I keep the door locked!"

Propped up against the counter, he shrugs at her, his smirk growing as he makes a the vague noise of a noncommittal answer.

Still glaring at him, she reaches over his shoulder to open one of the cabinets he seems to have left ignored thus far. "I could have you arrested," she murmurs derisively as she pulls out one of her Academy issued protein supplements. His hand darts after hers to grab a packet from the shelf. Shifting one corner of her mouth upward, she slams the door shut on his fingers.

Cato swears but otherwise refrains from showing any sign of the pain that must, doubtlessly, be thrumming through his right hand. Instead, he simply clenches it into a fist around one of the supplement servings.

She shakes her packet open, her eyes scornful as she assesses him. "Are you going to tell me what you think you're doing here?"

Copying her movement with his own breakfast, Cato raises a sardonic eyebrow. "You didn't really think I'd let you get away with that stunt you pulled yesterday again."

Well, no. But she hadn't woken up absurdly early this morning, so, to be fair, she hadn't been attempting a repeat.

"Forget the arrest. I could probably justify throwing a knife at your neck."

Still absentmindedly tossing his half-eaten apple up into the air and then back down into his hand, Cato snorts. "Because you'd miss."

He barely has time to observe her leaning down to pull her dagger out before it's piercing its way through the air towards his fruit, piercing its core, and sending it crashing down to the ground.

"Nice shot." Clove loathes him for the way that he continues to grin as he collects the fallen apple. "How are you planning to get your dagger back?"

She crosses her arms. "I have another."

A wave of discomfort pulls at her as his appraising pupils dart down the short length of her body, scanning the tight fitting cloth of her training gear for other possible hiding places "Of course you do, little girl," he says through his chronic grin, stowing her dagger away into the training bag hanging loosely against the blades of his shoulders.

Her eyes narrow. She does have another, of course; that wasn't a lie. Still, though, she has never done well with sharing, has always been a bit possessive - especially when it comes to her knives. Attempting to force the irritated tenseness out of her muscles, she composes her facial expression into one of apathy. She's hardly about to let Cato know how annoyed his retaliation has rendered her. That wouldn't do.

Sharp nails puncture her palms as her fists tighten, her smile sweetens.

* * *

The morning only worsens from there. Walking to the Academy, although not the most excruciating experience in existence had hardly been a pleasant one; not with Cato's reminders of how many other girls would be thrilled by the gift of his presence featuring in the conversation. Their entrance into the stone halls of the Academy should have offered some relief, alleviated some of her irritation. It doesn't. Instead, it offers a sign, instructing their training level, in large block letters, to report to Viewing Room #4.

Clove groans.

"Fuck," the words resounds gratingly and low, thick with promises of bloodied, aggravated knuckles. The sentiment behind the word is wholly hers; she feels it more keenly than even the ire that's consumed her morning for the minutes prior.

But it's not her voice.

It takes her a moment to realize that someone else had spoken her silent frustration aloud, to jerk her chin over to face Cato in surprise.

"What? Not thrilled to spend a day 'learning from the strategies of past victors?" she questions mockingly. Or, more accurately, to spend the day wasting time in front of a television screen. Most of their peers seem to be.

The blonde boy beside her is, naturally, still grinning when he responds, but coldly, so much so that his reply falls from his lips like hail. "They don't have anything to teach me."

Her thoughts, exactly.

Eyes narrowing, her pale ice against his blue fire, they succumb to a moment a mutual understanding.

* * *

Tense with irritation, Clove folds herself into one of the plethora of fold-out chairs that had been set up in the Academy's viewing room, a seat, like the rest, that forces one to sit with a stiff sort of discomfiture. Although she rarely deviates from perfect posture anyway, the forced straightness of her back hardly improves her mood. Perhaps, she thinks, that's why the seats surrounding her own are so far being avoided as thoroughly as they might be if their laps were padded with blades. Her ice blue eyes, her cinched lipped frown, her compacted form all hint at the fierce frustration humming through her, as do her legs, folded, but with the top one pointed at the toes, as if ready to kick out at anyone who dares to invade her personal space. She wouldn't, of course. Attacking people in the expected manner is so rarely satisfying, in her opinion.

Clove glares at the large projection screen. It's still dark and footage-less as trainees continue to flood into the rows of chairs currently occupying the viewing room's floor space.

And she's usually so fond of the Academy. The thought doesn't resound through her mind with the sarcasm that many of her others do. She does like the Academy, genuinely enjoys the routine it usually offers - the return to the gym, to Medea, to practice. Which is why the sight of a sign directing her training level into the viewing room for a morning of rewatching old Hunger Games videos that she's already viewed at least a dozen times leaves her distinctly annoyed. Especially when it's the sixty-fifth. Again.

Clove rolls her eyes, ears already assaulted with the sound of girlish giggles at the prospect of spending several hours staring at Finnick fucking Odair.

"Do you even know how to smile?"

She snaps her head up to find Cato smirking down at her as he claims the seat to her right.

"At you?" she says without missing a beat. "No." Her words are low, without their usual fake note of sweetness; she's too irritated to bother summoning it.

Cato leans back in his seat, somehow managing to defy physics and manipulate it into looking almost comfortable. "How about in general?"

A mental shiver gnaws at her. She actually can't actually think of much that she finds more disconcerting than people who smile, people who do so genuinely rather than in her own manner of mocking hostility. Not that she's about to tell Cato this. Instead, Clove shrugs. "I was smiling yesterday. You should know, seeing as you're the one who made such a big deal out of it."

"Some people smile nicely."

"As if you ever have either."

He replies through a smirk, giving voice to her most often thought mantra, "Some people are idiots."

She turns her head away from him, staring ahead and clinging to the vain hope that he'll give up on this somewhat alarming attempt at conversation with her. It turns out, though, that sitting next to a silently smirking Cato is even more unbearable than having to put up with a speaking one.

"Don't you have a harem to harass?" she bites out finally, snapping her head over in a jerked motion to glare at him. Or at least the friends that he'd broken off from her to speak with earlier.

He shakes his head, squirming in his seat in a barely perceivable motion. The sight gratifies her for some strange reason; it's pleasing to know that, as at ease as he may look, he's no more comfortable than the rest of them. "I have the morning off."

"Right," she darts her eyes to the screen. "Finnick Odair stole your place in their hearts?"

Apparently, she says his name with as much malice as she thinks it, judging by the way Cato raises an eyebrow at her tone, anyway.

She sighs, opting for objectivity rather than anger. It takes less energy. "His games are overrated." A part of her expects Cato to argue. He, after all, doesn't seem entirely opposed to using his looks to gain an advantage wherever he can. A grin forms on his face instead, a feral one.

Leaning towards her, he says, "Could have been bloodier."

Annoyed by his proximity, but too stubborn to flinch away, Clove crosses her arms instead, wiping the expression from her face away into the dust of apathy. Still, a smirk grows on her mouth, despite herself. "Exactly."

The screen flares to life, the lights dim, and conversation fades. Clove doesn't have to look over at Cato to know that his smirk doesn't.

* * *

Clove doesn't put up quite as much of a struggle when Cato reaches for her bag upon their release from the Academy later that day - not because of any acquiescence on her part, she would insist, if asked. She's simply to busy ranting to protest at the present moment.

"And was it really necessary for him to take off his shirt eleven times?" Clove spats, kicking the dirt on the path in front of her with each step.

The corner of Cato's mouth quirks upward. "His sponsors thought so."

She rolls her eyes, his comment doing nothing to placate her. "Partial nudity shouldn't be grounds for gifts."

"What?" he raises an eyebrow at her. "He wasn't showing enough for you?"

Her disgust has grown so thick that bile might as well be rising in her throat as she glares at him for his teasing. "Of course not. I just don't think that stripping counts as a respectable method of winning the Hunger Games." Brutal violence, certainly. Cunning, sure. Anything else, she finds pathetic.

Laughter rings through the sun soaked air, grounded out from Cato's throat. "I should have known you'd be prude."

She smiles sweetly at him. "Most people are in comparison with you. Odair included."

Cato turns to smirk directly at her, slowing his pace slightly. "Tell you what," he says. "When I'm in the arena, I'll walk around buck naked. Just for you."

Lips tugging upwards, Clove manages to calm her expression into one of thoughtfulness. "Smart strategy. I can't imagine the other tributes will be much of a challenge once you've permanently scarred them all. Some might even go blind."

Still, he smirks. "That tends to happen when looking at bright, brilliant objects."

Great. Now, he's comparing himself to the sun - an apt likening, she decides, at least in one way. She grimaces at the touch of its warm rays against her bare arms. Clove can't stand either one. "Sure," she agrees, which, naturally, causes his eyes to narrow at her in suspicion. "Right before they burn themselves out."

"And take out everything else with them."

Clove's lips cinch. She can't argue with that, can't dispute the fact that she pities whoever ends up in the arena with Cato when he, inevitably, is called to volunteer for the Hunger Games. Him or Gregoric; she can't imagine it won't be one or the other. Probably Cato. He'll volunteer and then most likely win, return to District Two a victor. The thought grinds at her, scratching at the scars left by the irritation that's marred her mood all day. Only two years younger or not, the age gap is enough to almost ensure that he'll get to experience the Games before her.

The notion is not a pleasant one.

Silence claims their interaction for several moments, until Cato ruins it all. "You'll do whatever it takes to win. We all will when the time comes."

Another assertion she has trouble arguing with. They're at the porch by the time the words pass from his lips, though, so she doesn't need to answer. Instead, Clove leans over his shoulder to where her sack, plain and black just like all of the ones issued by the Academy, thumps against Cato's back alongside his own identical one, to retrieve her things.

Mute, she doesn't allow a small smirk to form on her face until she's inside her house, wondering what Cato will think when he returns home. She dumps the contents of his sack out on the kitchen counter, her lips curving further as she fingers her stolen dagger. Her water bottle may not seem as impressive a prize.

* * *

There's no shower to impede her hearing that night, to thwart her ears from catching the sound of footsteps pounding through her house at one in the morning. Sleep might have done it, deafened some other person, but hers is rarely any heavier than the flimsy white sheets that she's currently laying under.

Clove sits up slowly, gripping her knife so tightly that her knuckles appear white. She wills her hand to loosen. A dream, she considers, as a few seconds of silence send doubts up her spine. The sounds could have been nothing but figments, ghosts belonging to her subconscious.

_Thud_. It's louder now. Another set of footsteps sound, another piece proof that someone is, in fact, inside her house.

Her eyes dart down to the blade that she's never had true just cause to use before. Not outside of training.

The steps continue, now, in a steady rhythm, their volume increasing as they seem to approach her bedroom door.

Set firm around the knife's handle, her fingers won't relax.

* * *

Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading this so far! Especially to everyone who's taken the time to review: Orange Pudding, Drizzling Rain, chaffed, Jesus the Gardener, luvxas37, Marina, clatoforever, GottaLoveMEgan, thatiismahogany, and Nightlock Angel 786. I really appreciate it :)

I'm so sorry that it's taken me so long to post this chapter! I promise to try to update more frequently now that I'm out of school. Anyway, thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

Focusing on the blade in her hand makes things simpler. Concentrating on muting the impact that the soles of her feet make when she slides them onto the cool floor beside her bed renders things simpler still. Both, along with every other technicality of her silent trek to the closed door of her room, strikes Clove as a simpler focus than that of the owner of the pair of feet currently pounding through her otherwise hushed house and his or her possible identity.

Clove tries to think of one option, one name, that might ease the strangling nerves that have taken possession of her fingers. Their grip remains tense.

Aside from an actual intruder, some pathetic thief or criminal, there is, after all, not any great number of possibilities, and, out of that scarce variety, she cannot muse into memory one face that she would not greet with a scowl, if not a stab wound.

Her body falls thoughtlessly into an attack-prone stance as the volume of the pacing towards her room increases. She stays standing in such a manner when the knob before her begins to twist and turn in a foreboding dance.

The door creaks, maneuvered so by a hand that moves not so much harshly as it does purposefully, without a drop of hesitation to confuse the hinges, before it's open suddenly, completely.

Clove can't decide whether or not to release the breath that had trapped itself inside her throat. Still, it escapes, regardless, through a clipped question.

"What are you doing here?"

The dark haired man occupying her doorway stands as large as he does, for the moment, silent. His brown eyes - like her own only in their coldness - pierce her dissimilar stature and the shape it's taken appraisingly. Their surroundings may still lack illumination, but those familiar details don't escape her notice, despite the darkness cloaking her father.

Clove knows that the vision of her dad, the realization that he is the culprit responsible for her interrupted slumber, should cause her muscles to relax. It should cause her knife to lower, at the least. Scowling, she chooses not to alter her form in the slightest.

Gustus Fuhrman gives her a nod rather than a reply, the gesture approving but the tone used when he speaks, ignoring her question, impenetrable.

"Good form. You've fixed your knees since I last saw you."

Clove deepens her frown and considers informing him that she hadn't been looking for his opinion. She opts instead to repeat her earlier question.

He replies this time and, if he's bothered by the fact that she still has her knife aimed at his jugular, it doesn't show in his voice.

"Medicine."

It occurs to her that she's received more articulate answers from even Cato, but her father flicks on a light switch before she has time to request elaboration. Her eyebrow arches as her gaze shifts to the cast-clad left arm that the light bulbs have illuminated.

"Small accident out in Eleven," he says shortly. "Nothing for you to concern yourself with."

Clove crosses her arms. She hadn't been planning on concerning herself. She never has before, not with her father or his peacekeeper duties. "And Eleven doesn't have medicine?"

"None worth taking. Nothing worth anything in those backwoods Districts." Ire, finally, peaks through his words.

Turning around, she dismisses the idea of continuing their encounter with a reply, and climbs back into bed without another murmur.

"I didn't dismiss you." He doesn't move closer to her bed bound body to say this, doesn't even pass over her room's threshold, but the words creep closer to grate against her skin nevertheless.

Propping herself up on her elbows, Clove smiles with as much false sweetness as she can bring herself to summon. "You wouldn't want me tired during training tomorrow, now would you?"

The lights die and her door closes, but his image stays with in the darkness.

* * *

He's home. It doesn't matter how briefly. He's home, and Clove isn't well-acquainted enough with optimism to convince herself that things won't deteriorate further from there. Realism has always suited her better.

Grunting. That's the first clue Clove receives that her house has decided to play host to yet another disturbance. The sound of bodies beaten against shuddering cabinets comes next. Narrowing her eyes in the direction of the noise-ridden kitchen, she makes one final tightening tug on her high ponytail and quickens her pace down the stairs.

It's not until she reaches the room in question that she berates herself for her curiosity. Of course. When, she wonders with a roll of her eyes, was the last morning that she didn't have some cause to wonder at Cato's sanity? Still, this is impressively idiotic. Even for him.

Clove stands silently the doorway, watching with a gaping mouth that quickly reworks itself into a smirk as Cato and her father alternate between swinging their fists - well, in the latter's case, his good fist - at one another and shoving each other into various stone surfaces. Glancing at the clock, she waits for them to notice her presence. A minute passes.

"Excuse me," she speaks finally, her voice hard with amusement-marred austerity. "But you're blocking my way to the cabinets."

Both men jerk their heads over to look at her, Cato with what looks to be a black eye and her dad from the headlock that her moronic training partner somehow seemed to maneuver him into.

"Clove," the brutally grinning blonde boy pants her name, refusing to loosen his hold on her dad. "Nice of you to show up. I found this prick lurking around your kitchen."

"I'm her fucking father," her dad grits out, his bad arm clearly having left him at a disadvantage in this confrontation. "And this is my fucking kitchen. What the hell are you doing in it?"

Grin gone, Cato turns to Clove after releasing the older man, otherwise ignoring the Fuhrman patriarch. "Your dad?" he repeats through a hard exhaled breath.

Clove tilts her head. "This is why most people introduce themselves with a handshake rather than a fist. It prevents this sort of idiocy." She waves her hand to the left a bit. "And you're still in front of the cabinets."

Dazed, Cato opens the one that she'd slammed his fingers in the day before and tosses her a protein supplement.

She smiles sweetly. "Always so chivalrous."

Her father doesn't seem to share her good mood or, for that matter, Cato's numb disbelief. "You know him?" he demands, pointing at Cato with an angry finger.

Clove looks at them with mocking patience. "Really, this all could have been sorted out so much more easily if you'd just introduced yourself from the beg-"

"Answer the question."

"-inning," she continues unperturbed. "And yes. This is Cato." The idea of introducing him as her stalker flits briefly across her mind before she dismisses it reluctantly. Unless they want to arrive to the Academy late, neither she nor Cato have much more time to linger about for another fight. "My training partner."

He eyes the size difference between his daughter and the brute still staring at him with some distrust wearily. "She keeping up with you alright, boy?"

As Cato's suspicion gives way to a smug opening of his mouth, Clove leaps into action. Striding over to him, she grabs his wrist and pulls him towards the front hall. "We keep up with one another just fine," she says quickly before dragging Cato towards the front porch and mentioning something over her shoulder about how they really need to leave if they want to avoid a beating. Once outside, she quickly flinches her hand away from his skin.

"Fighting cripples now?" she asks as they walk down the steps.

Ignoring her taunt, he glares at her. "You said your dad was gone."

"He is. Most of the time."

Cato's feet assault the ground beneath them with his every step. "You could have given me a fucking warning that he was coming."

Exasperation tints her expression, curving her lips downward and fingers tight. "Sorry. I guess I forgot to include that in the newsletter I send out to people who like to _break into my house_."

His grin reemerges. "Get better security."

"I lock all my doors!"

A shrug is all the response her furious protest receives.

"Fuck you," she grounds out through cinched lips. "And, for the record, I wasn't exactly expecting him either."

Apparently her bitterness has grown thick enough to seep into her words, because that statement earns her a look of bemusement. "I didn't think you got caught off guard, little girl."

"I had my knife ready."

Somehow, she can hear in Cato's chuckle his awareness of her wish that she had used it.

The knowledge that he's gotten to know her at all plants a disturbed frown on her face.

* * *

The knowing smirk doesn't fade. It remains stretched across his face as unadulterated fury diffuses over Clove's own at the deterrence of her knife-station bound feet over to the spears by Calliope. For all of the times that she's wanted to stab her trainer recently, she has never found herself so close to actually doing so as in that moment. Every fire clad molecule of resentment that has been building up within her legs and arms and eyeballs since her father's arrival cries out in protest.

She needs her knives, the release they offer.

The smirk lives through each slash of her spear's tip against the plush dummies at her mercy and their violent destruction, their descent past salvation.

It grows when they're told to fight, keeps itself present for each angry move of attack she makes.

"Your dad should visit more often," Cato teases through a short breath once they've managed to knock each other to the padded ground.

"Oh, really." Flipping her head over on the gym floor to look at him, Clove raises an unamused eyebrow. "And why's that?"

His eyes bore into hers, fire trying to melt ice.

"Rage looks good on you, little girl."

She pushes herself up into a standing position, speaking coldly before walking away as soon as the timer marking the end of the training day sounds. "It don't know what you're talking about."

Cato stares after her with a smirk. She's beautiful when she loses control.

* * *

"Lover's spat?"

Clove's lips cinch together tightly as Gregoric falls into step with her, clinging to her pace. She's not in the fucking mood for this; barbed banter holds no appeal to her at the moment, not today. All she wants is to get home, to forget her father's invasion into her perfectly content world of solitude, and find solace with her knives, her targets. That's it. Arrogant morons don't factor in to her plan.

Raking a hand through his curls, the moron in question flashes her a mocking smile of sympathy. "Turned you down then?"

"Will you just fuck off?"

He continues on, unperturbed. "Or have you just given up the schoolgirl crush on Ludwig? Realized there are better men." Although they're not particularly bushy or unruly, Clove can't help but regard Gregoric's eyebrows with disgust. It might have something to do with the way that they waggle with his last sentence.

"Fuck. Off."

Extending an utterly unconvincing white flag, he surrenders his hands in the air. "No need to get hostile. I'm just looking to see if you've come to your senses and decided to reconsider my offer."

Perfectly still, she stares at him for a silent, blink-less moment before walking again. He jogs to catch up with her.

"Well?"

Resigning herself to his pestering, Clove responds, her voice taut with irritation. "I don't waste my time with losers."

"Right then," he mutters, running a hand through his curls. "Still playing hard to get."

"I'm not _playing_-"

"I'll let it go. For now." If Clove were the praying kind, she'd thank the heavens. As it is, she releases an exhaled breath of relief as she picks up her pace towards the door.

Still, Gregoric does not abandon her side. "But," he drawls the condition out, "I did have something else to say to you."

"Why don't you say it to yourself," she suggests, finally resigning herself to participating in the conversation, to calling upon the energy to fill her voice with artificial sweetness. "You seem to be much fonder of the sound of your voice than I am."

That earns a strained smile from him. "Maybe I just like hearing yours," he taunts back.

"That would make you a machoist." Honestly, she can't recall ever having spoken a word to him that wasn't at least vaguely derogatory, if not blatantly so.

"You're the one voluntarily spending time with Ludwig."

"In lieu of _you_. That's a sign of sanity, not machoism."

His façade of charm breaks a bit more with her each syllable. A clenched jaw occupies his mouth before he manages to relax it enough for a response. "I'm hoping you're not such a bitch when you're drunk."

Clove's forehead creases into angry, confused folds. "Why would you hope _that_?"

"Andromeda Weld's throwing a party."

The skin above her eyes doesn't smoothen.

"You should come," Gregoric says. It's the most pathetic attempt at a persuasive argument that she's ever heard.

"I would rather spend my Friday night with my head in an oven." Again, she urges her feet to hasten, to carry her far away from the figure stalking her each step. She's begun to turn the idea of tripping him around in her mind when a familiar blonde haired boy barges in between them. The corners of her pink lips curve in barely perceptible tug towards her ears. Strange, she observes, as she quickly straightens her mouth. He usually sends them plummeting towards her chin. For once, though, Cato's arrival doesn't leave her longing for a sharp instrument of torture, even with his distasteful proximity. As though Clove needed another reason to loathe his rival.

"Aldrin." A stiff nod accompanies the cold greeting.

Gregoric's reply might as well be a mirror. "Ludwig."

Not that Cato would notice the reflection. Before Gregoric could even emit his surname, he had already turned to her, already begun funneling their way through the crowd of trainees congesting the exit. Watching him trample a path through the masses of bodies almost sends another spasm to her mouth (the only reasonable explanation for its upward arc).

The muffled call of an address and time follows her.

* * *

That avoidance of her father may be a small victory, but, as Clove successfully finishes her walk to her room without encountering him, it's one that she's absurdly grateful for. Shutting the door behind her sharply, her eyes fly towards the glinting surfaces of her knife collection. The sight releases her shoulders from the rigidness that had clung to them all day.

Finally.

Her feet forget all thoughts of grace as they hurry over towards the shelf on which she leaves them displayed. A long sigh of satisfaction possesses her throat. Hovering her hand over the neat line of knives, she lingers over each for a meditative moment before finally allowing her fingers to scoop down. They don't grab her choice immediately, despite the desperation playing with her every pulse point. Clove's fingertips instead skirt across Sage's sleek silver blade, her hard handle, stroking each as a more romantically inclined person might caress the body of a long absent lover. _Home_.

Walking over to the targets set up against the adjacent wall, she loses herself, loses the daughter with a suddenly present father, and finds someone better, someone powerful - the lethal girl who laces her every action with control and cruelty, who can stow emotion away as easily as one might a winter coat during the months of spring and summer.

The sky has darkened by the time that she's snapped away from her art, but that the loss of daylight isn't what breaks her focus from her knives. Time, as it always does when she's given freedom to throw her knives as she pleases, no longer particularly concerns her.

The figure who's once again taken up residency in her doorway, however, does.

Tense, she turns around to face him, resenting his tall, massive stature and the way that she has to tilt her head up to meet his watchful gaze. With an expectant eye, she waits.

"Good technique," he notes with a nod.

"I know."

Silence lags between them before he holds his arm up, presenting the healed, cast-free limb. "Got my medicine," he says. His voice, as always, is gruff. She's never been sure whether his every attempt at speaking resounds with such scratchiness due to infrequent use or his habitual way of barking his - usually clipped - words. Clove supposes that it doesn't matter; she doesn't actually care, after all.

Apparently, he doesn't hold her disdain for stating the obvious. "So, you can leave." Clove chooses not to articulate the thought as a question, simply because she doesn't want it to be one. He's leaving. A simple, irrefutable statement.

(Optimism may have never fit her well, but neither has passivity.)

Another sharp nod seizes his chin. "First thing tomorrow morning."

Her tongue itches to ask if he could have gotten anything sooner, but she knows better. If there had been anything, he would have taken it, would have had to. Vacations, after all, aren't part of the peacekeeper package. Still, the idea of sleeping in the same house with him that night, despite the distance between their rooms, sends bugs crawling up the surface of her back. It's wrong, him being here, disturbing the comfort she finds in an empty house, and she doesn't doubt that the incongruity will mar her sleep. She catches a sigh between her cinched lips, unwilling to reveal the emotion. At least it's Friday.

He cocks his head at her, stare steady, before shifting his pupils over to her target board. Invisible insect legs continue to assault her spine. This is wrong. Completely wrong. He shouldn't be here; no one should. Her house is supposed to be her own, not a place where she has to worry about strained conversation or appraisal or avoidance.

Likely in acknowledgement of her visible accuracy, he states, "You are keeping up with that training partner of yours, then."

A smirk battling with her apathetically-clothed lips, she jerks her chin affirmatively. "Clearly."

He ignores her response. "With knife-throwing." She bristles at the lack of respect with which he handles the name of her principle passion. "How about strength?" Clove's jaw clenches at the reminder of what her scant size steals from her. "Sword-fighting?" Her fists tighten. "Spears? Hand-to-hand?"

Not giving her the chance to stop his suddenly tireless tirade of her insecurities with any acid-coated comment of sarcasm, he launches directly into his next sentence. "Because I got a feel for that boy today, and I wonder how much of a chance you have against him."

This time she doesn't let him rob her of a retort. "Luckily," she says, sounding saccharine, "father isn't always like daughter. He beat you. _I _can handle Cato just fine."

Unfazed, he continues promptly. "When you have a knife."

Composure has never felt so slippery in her grasp - not during any argument with Cato, any defeat by his hand, any pestering by his rival. Her calm withers more and more each second and Clove's vision has blurred too red for her to see any way of delaying its disintegration.

"Did I ever tell you," he goes on, not even a flicker of feeling ever showing in his tone, "about my time at the Academy?"

"You failed," she summarizes flatly. He was never given the opportunity to volunteer, to become a victor, so it doesn't matter. Losers, as she told Gregoric earlier, don't interest her. Neither do their stories.

Before she can comprehend his intention well enough to stop him, her father has walked over to her wall of targets and plucked Sage between his meaty fingers.

Fury flows through her, like water over the brim of a cup. He doesn't get to touch that. Not one of her knives. "What the hell do you think you're-" Her demand fades when, having returned to the doorway, he throws Sage back towards the space she'd occupied seconds prior. Clove's eyes widen at the accuracy with which he returned her knife to its mark.

"I threw knives. You get that from me. Knife-throwing was my specialization, and I was damn good at it too." His stare doesn't drip with any anger, any malice, doesn't drip with anything, actually. Still, it freezes her. "Not to mention I was about the size of your partner. Now," he takes a breath that sends frost into the air. "I wouldn't set myself on volunteering if I were you. If they didn't pick me, why would they choose you?"

Clove can't move. She couldn't speak even if she had a reply, couldn't manipulate her tongue into forming a sound.

"Go back to your knives. You're dismissed."

He closes the door only seconds before she manages to stir her muscles into reaching over to her shelf for a blade and throwing it. The creaking of the wood under its attack doesn't satisfy her. Even the feel of its handle in her grip when she retrieves it fails to return her to the blissful concentration she'd known only minutes before.

_You got that from me_.

With one angry thrust, she flings it against the wall, for the first time in her life, paying no mind to its precision as a strangled sobbed breath rips violently at her mouth.

_Why would they choose you?_

Because, Clove replies belatedly, she's the best. She _knows _that, always has known it, still knows it now. But the claim feels hollow even in her own mind. When she mumbles it to herself next, it strikes her as more hollow still.

There's no pride left in her at the moment, no confidence, no certainty. All she knows is anger; hatred. She's never felt hate so keenly before in her life, has never known it so well as she does now.

"I hate him," she whispers to herself again and again and again until the mantra becomes mindless. She hates that he exists. She hates that he's here. She hates that he spoke to her, hates that he thinks so little of her, hates that he cares what the fuck he thinks. She _hates _him. She hates that he's still in her house and that she'll have to plan out her trip to the kitchen for dinner so that she doesn't encounter him. She hates that he's made her a coward, a sneak in her own domain.

Her three new favorite words still on her lips, she marches out of her room, down the stairs, and out the front door, without allowing herself to become fully cognizant of what she's doing. If she had, Clove might have remembered her disgust for parties, for Gregoric, and even for Andromeda Weld, for that matter. But it wouldn't have mattered. None of it holds a candle to the hatred coursing through her, spurring her to walk ever more quickly to the address Gregoric had shouted at her.

Clove keeps up her quiet chant the whole way there.

* * *

Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading so far! A special thanks to everyone who has reviewed, too: luvxas37, HungerGamesHarryPotter7887, quiveringmouse, Marina, GottaLoveMEgan, Jesus the Gardener, ronandhermy, Orange Pudding, iluvsourskittles, and anonymous. Your comments really mean a lot to me :)

Also, I'm not exactly sure about whether or not it makes sense for Clove's dad to have come back to District Two for medicine, but, since I needed him to show up somehow, it was the best that I could come up with. I don't actually know much about peacekeepers, so I'm sorry if the situation lacks realism.

Thanks again for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

Clamor and crowds. There's not much that would usually repel Clove so wholly, and, were her mind working more clearly at the moment, that aversion might have been enough to sway her from walking through the front door of the Weld house. A twisted sort of satisfaction contorts her mouth into an expression caught between a grin and a grimace as she throws herself into the noise and claustrophobia. A more introspection-prone night might have forced Clove to acknowledge that it's easier to distract herself with such superficial horrors, that they take less energy to hate than - _yougotthatfromme-whywouldtheychooseyou_ - other subjects. None of this stirs her conscious. That would require it to stray from the exhausting task of her cursing her father's existence. All she knows is that the irritated disgust drawn out of her by the sight of her intoxicated peers has an oddly calming effect. Probably something similar to the amputation of a frostbitten toe.

"Watch it," a barely perceptible voice growls through the din. Her lips pull themselves into a small, cruel smile. So does stomping on any oafish feet that happen to hinder her path.

The current cramped nature of the house has deeper roots in the popularity of the party than in any paucity of size possessed by its walls, its rooms. The home actually appears quite large. Clove would even call it luxurious, an observation that her high standards don't allow her to make lightly. Fastidious or not, though, the opulent décor, the ornate rugs and spanning staircases, visible in the front hall doesn't allow for much denial.

Walking aimlessly along the long hallways that opens from the foyer, Clove's breathing remains short and heavy. Heavier still once a piercing peal of tingling giggles reaches her ears. Out of all the sounds in existence, she would have to claim that noise as the most grating: those giggles full of sweetness and sugar and genuineness that greet her once she successfully jostles her way into a large lounge-like looking room. They resound, undoubtedly, from a variety of sources in the packed space, but from none as flagrantly as the pink folds of Andie Weld's lips.

The fact that Clove has never conversed with Andromeda speaks more of the petite brunette's extreme misanthropy than of any hostility or intended neglect from the latter girl. She doubts that the dollish thing even has the capability for either. Aside from her lustrous light locks, wood nymph green eyes, and long - often open - legs, Andie's friendliness has always served as perhaps her most defining features, if only for its rareness among the Academy's pupils.

Clove, needless to say, doesn't suffer from any great inclination to associate with her.

Then again, though, she's never had a particular fondness for parties either, nor any tendency towards reckless behavior.

Buried deep by rage, her sanity screams.

* * *

The giggling continues, scratching sporadically at Clove's senses. _Breathe_. She tries to convince herself that the annoyance should gratify her, that she can at least call it a distraction. She tries to remind herself that every moment she spends cringing at the high-pitched ringing supplies her with a few seconds for which her father's words fade from her head. _Breathe. _Although the resonance could jar even the most intense of worriers from their thoughts, neither cue works. If anything, they only exacerbate her short breath.

Alcohol, present around the house in no small quantity, tempts her briefly with a short siren call to which Clove quickly deafens her ears. She can't bring herself to fray the few surviving threads of her self-control. No matter how much it would likely help, no matter how thoroughly it would likely soothe away any understanding of her unraveling, she can't bring herself to surrender so.

The giggles pick up again. The desire to march across the room and strangle their spring proves to sing a much more alluring siren song than the liquor had. Stretched as every rigid piece of has become, Clove realizes with some apprehension that she might not actually have it in her to refrain from doing so.

Salvation presents itself in the form of a glass door.

Whether it's due to the thick hostility emanating from her every muscles, a sudden return of her invisibility, or simply a lack of interest on the part of her peers, no one attempts to thwart Clove's path over to what looks to be an outdoor patio with pleasantries.

Chills rein in the air outside, sending shivers along the pale length of Clove's skin and most of the other partygoers who had thought to get a bit of fresh air quickly back into the inebriated noise of the house's interior. Stepping further away from the threshold, she decides not to doom herself to a return so soon. Instead, Clove sets herself down miserably at a small round table that's appeal, admittedly doesn't originate in its size nor its shape, but rather in its emptiness.

A groan passes from her lips when a large and, unfortunately, familiar figure claims the seat adjacent to her. It _had _been empty, at least.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to resist coming," Gregoric says smugly, opting against a more customary greeting.

Glaring at him, Clove debates the merits of an escape. Her legs end up remaining crossed, the right not moving from its dangling position over the left. There wouldn't be much of a point to leaving, she decides at the end of a silent soliloquy, as, between the eardrum shattering mess inside this house and her father's presence in her own, she honestly can't think of any other place to which she could relocate. It's become perfectly clear that she'll receive a displeasing welcome wherever she ventures. Besides, as distractions go, she supposes that she can't find much better than Gregoric. He almost manages to make claustrophobia look endearing. And all without, to her knowledge, ever needing to giggle.

Her arms cross themselves when he tries to hand her a bland-cup-clad drink indistinguishable save for its alcoholic smell. "I don't drink."

"And here I was hoping to see you let your hair down."

A small smirk creeping onto her face, she reaches up and frees her brunette tresses from their ponytail holder.

He glares at her, apparently not amused by her antics. "I didn't mean quite so literally."

"That's too bad," she says, smiling with faux-innocence, "since this is as close as you're going to get."

Suddenly, his head begins to crane its way closer to hers. "I'm not sure what you're quite clear on the concept of a party."

"Enlighten me, then."

"Well," he drawls through a crooked turn of his mouth, "some people would change out of their training clothes before coming." His eyes dart pointedly to the tank top and shorts that she'd been wearing at the Academy earlier and hadn't even thought to replace. "Then, traditionally, they'd interact with other people and possibly get a drink instead of hiding outside to fucking freeze to death."

She frowns at him. "For someone who claims to know so much about partying, you're not very good at it."

His replying chuckle contains as much frost as the breeze around them. "You did drag yourself here for me. I figured I might as well say hi."

Laughter rips from her chest, deep and surprisingly authentic. She's not certain of the cause, whether it's the idea of her going anywhere for anyone else's sake, let alone for Gregoric's, of all people's, or simply the aftereffects of her conversation with her father, but she can't seem to stop.

Her hysterics earn a dubious look in payment. "Are you sure you're sober?"

Clove might have answered, or might simply have continued laughing for some indeterminable amount of time, had the sound of the patio door swinging open not diverted her attention.

The emergence of two tall golden blondes tempers her frenzy.

So much for solitude, Clove thinks with a cackle marred sigh.

* * *

Andie never once considered that Cato's late arrival might have its origins in rudeness. He could easily have arrived the moment that her party began, could, as her neighbor, have gotten there before any guest, but, still, although she doesn't see him until the clock on a nearby wall marks more than an hour after the time at which she'd pleaded with him to come, a wide smile stretches itself across her face at his entrance.

"Cato!"

Doing her best to move towards them, she doesn't notice the way that Cato's shoulders tense at the squealed greeting, nor does she hear his friend Achates snicker from his side.

"That didn't take long," the boy in question's bronze haired friend mutters. "You want me to distract her?"

"Don't bother. She'll track me down eventually."

Andromeda may not demonstrate any prodigious ability at the Academy, but Cato had to grant her an irritating skill for hunting him. Not that it was particularly hard to do so. He rarely attempted inconspicuousness, certainly not when it mattered so little. Cato would hardly have come to a party held at her house if he hadn't been prepared to at least talk to the girl.

"Andie," he acknowledges her with a nod, taking in the Amazon legs that her tight black skirt displays so enterprisingly with no small amount of appreciation.

"I'm so glad that you could come," she says with a warmth that never fails to disturb him slightly. It's not altogether dissimilar to the way that his spike-tongued training partner speaks at times, save for its sincerity.

Busy scanning the area - if he's going to have a fully clothed conversation with Andie, he'll need at least a bit of a buzz - for a cooler, he doesn't bother listening to his own response, let alone to the sentiments that she wastes no time in beginning to gush in turn.

"Cato," a discreet nudge from Achates revives his attention, alerting him to the way that his host's fair eyebrows have drawn together in concern over his apparently poor hearing. "What's your training partner's name again?"

Bemusement overtakes his answer. "Clove?"

She brightens. "That's it! Kind of petite, right? With brown hair and freckles?"

Images of her glaring face trapped just beneath his own in their last hand-to-hand fight flash in his mind. "That's her," he affirms with a jerk of his chin, about to open his mouth to demand a reason for the inquiry when, true to her gregarious nature, Andie explains without a syllable of prompting.

"It's too bad you didn't get here earlier! I really wanted to say hello to her, since, you know, she never seems to come to these things, but I just couldn't think of her name, and thought it would be rude to ask-"

Not bothering to inform her that Clove would likely be much more offended by the mulled over approach than by her ignorance, Cato raises an eyebrow. "Clove is _here_?" Skepticism paints his words.

Andie nods enthusiastically. "I know, right? Completely unexpected. When Greg mentioned that he invited her, I didn't think for a second that she would actually show up."

"Aldrin invited her," Cato repeats, his voice low enough that only Achates, who, suddenly, has discovered a firm desire to go looking for his latest fling somewhere on the opposite side of the room, can hear the growled sentence.

Biting her lip and revolving her bright woodland green around the room, she says, "Maybe I should say something now… I could have sworn that-Oh! There she is." Nose wrinkling in confusion, her triumph fizzles quickly. "What is she doing outside?" Andie's lithe figure shudders at the mere thought of the frigid night air.

Cato follows her gaze, fist clenching as he catches a glimpse through the patio doors of Gregoric sitting beside a laughing girl that would bare an uncanny resemblance to Clove had his partner even the ability to laugh so unreservedly. Narrowing his eyes, he skims the unbound length of her hair, trying to remember a time that she's ever abandoned her standard ponytail before.

Achates thinks better than to follow them outside.

* * *

Clove finds the contrast slightly hilarious. Truly comedic. Their heads look almost identical, gold hair gleaming in the moonlight, but that's as far as the similarity goes. Andie's smiling expression glows as lightly as her long locks, while Cato's grin of greeting contains all the gentleness of a rapid dog. Not exactly twins, Clove thinks, as annoyed by their appearance - Cato, she sees enough of at the Academy and Andromeda, she has no desire to ever see - as she is grateful for the further distraction.

"Now what brings you two lovebirds out here?" Gregoric asks, leaning back in his chair and crossing his elbows out against the back of his skull in a makeshift pillow.

Clove rolls her eyes, unable to think of what on earth he might do with himself when he's not trying his hardest to irk Cato.

"We were just coming out to ask you the same." Clove can't find it within herself to pity Andie, not for the thick naivety that secretes from her every pore, nor for the way that she tries and fails to keep the hurt from showing on her face when Cato shoves her away from him, throwing off the hand that she'd attempted to tangle with his own as though it moonlights as a leech. Still, she attempts to speak with brevity. "Aren't you just shivering?" Denied Cato's warmth, she wraps her arms around herself in a pathetic hug.

Clove looks down at her goose bump flecked flesh disinterestedly. They've gone through enough weather conditioning at the Academy that it seems a bit pointless for everyone to find the cold so repellent. Looking at Cato through the corner of her eye, she sees a smirk settle on his hard-eyed face as he quirks an eyebrow at her. Despite themselves, her lips twitch back in response.

She wonders if he thinks the same way that she does; if he knows that they'd face much worse - _whywouldtheychooseyou_ - in the arena.

Gregoric's reply gears itself towards Andie, but his eyes never shake from Cato's. "Luckily, I have Clove to keep me warm." She nearly chokes in disgust when he attempts to drape an arm around her shoulders. He might have met more success had Clove, smiling as sweetly as ever, not chosen that moment to beat her foot into his under the table. She might not then have had to cinch her lips shut to bar back a yelp of pain had Cato not chosen that moment to yank her out of her chair, handling her as though she was a demonically possessed rag doll.

He mutters some words of dismissal to Andie and Gregoric that Clove's smothering humiliation at the ease with which he plucked her up - _whywouldtheychooseyou_ - prevents her from hearing. Whatever it is, it's said quickly enough, lowly enough, and far enough through the patio door that, called back over his shoulder or not, she highly doubts that either of their abandoned companions managed to catch it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Clove grits out through her tight lips as he forces their way through the masses. He doesn't acquiesce.

Breath growing harsh, her eyes flicker down to the blade strapped to her leg. She's not in the mood for this, not tonight. Not on a night when she's been pushed far enough over the boundaries of her sanity that she's honestly having trouble remembering why it would rank as a bad idea to pull her knife free from its thigh sheath and proceed to pound it into Cato's throat, his chest, his eyes, his hands. Especially his hands. She'd rip them off, not bothering for efficiency or even precision. She'd relish in a jagged, sloppy slicing job that left his wrists bloody stubs. Unable to hold back screams of pain, he would glare up at her as she worked, as she wore his grin alongside her glee with the knowledge that he'd never grab her again.

Since, however, she sadly can't reach her knife in her current position, his brutal hands remain in tact and curled around her arm down the entire length of the spanning hallway. Even once it ends, even after, with all the gentleness of a porcupine, he pulls her through her a random threshold, Cato doesn't release her.

Furious, she wrenches against his weight until, finally, gaining freedom. Ice clad pupils raging around the room, she takes in her new surroundings before deciding that she might have found the place calming were her every nerve ending not electrified with wrath. It's smaller than an Academy gym, naturally. Its walls can't boast of quite the same width as those of her sanctuary, nor the same height, but they extend down to a similarly padded floor, and hold a familiar array of weapon shelves. Anxious, she quickly locates the knives, only to come upon annoyance with their relative distance and scarcity.

Crossing her sore arms, Clove wrangles apathy into her grip. "If you wanted to train, all you had to do was ask."

His biceps may have more muscles than hers, his body more weight, but Cato at least lacks her composure. "You told me," his says, his voice seething, "that you had no interest in Aldrin."

Her throat suddenly constricted by a fresh wave of anger, it takes her a moment to respond. She won't lose control. Not in front of him. She won't. Still, she can sense it happening. "Don't worry, Cato. You've officially proven yourself to be the bigger jackass out of the two of you. He's no longer any competition."

"Real cute, little girl."

"Actually, Andromeda beat me for that superlative." The retort is no more than a reflex at this point. She knows that. She can feel herself shattering, her control fleeing like from a deflated balloon. Smiling cracking into a glass shard snarl, she claws her nails into his cheek, wishing that the thin streak of blood would satisfy her. _Little girl_. A little girl with waiflike hands, useless without a weapon. Sure, she can scratch well enough with them, but they'll never snap anyone's neck. Not like his can. Not like her father's can.

"Damn it," she growls as one of his thick eyebrows shrugs at her anger. "Don't you get it? Whether I have an interest in Gregoric or not, whether I want to train with him, fuck him, kill him, blow him, or go to this utterly inane party with him, it's absolutely none of your concern."

His fingers twine around her neck, pinning her to the closest wall. "Wrong."

Arms, thankfully, still at liberty, she manages to reach down to grab her knife, to edge it against his own throat. "No. I'm really not."

He ignores the blade poised to bleed him just as she pays no mind to the clasp that could snap her like a twig. "Believe me, it concerns me."

"Why?" The word comes out in a short pant, no doubt a product of his strangling hold on her.

She might feel worse about the apparent weakness if his tone didn't mirror it so completely. "You're _my_ training partner."

"Thank you very much for the reminder, but I'm not having an identity crisis at the moment," she says, acid soaking each strained exhale. "What I want to know is why you care. Why the fuck does it matter?" Already taut against him, her knife inches its way a bit further into his skin. His irritatingly massive fingers clench around her a bit more tightly, bullying her vocal chords into a submission of silence.

The reply comes instantaneously, incredulously, as though she's the one whose mind never reached any stage of evolution beyond that of a Neanderthal. "It fucking matters," he sneers, "because I always have the best."

She could have berated him for his vaguely objectifying word choice. She could have torn into him for essentially turning her into a trophy. She could even, ready as her weapon sits, have done so in the literal, bloody sense.

Instead, she swings her legs up to straddle him, invoking a strength that her father would claim she lacks to throw Cato down to the floor. Her knife's side dives a fraction deeper into his flesh. Clove takes advantage of her partner's shock to shake her neck free from his prison of a palm, allowing her mouth the first deep breath its had in what feels like hours.

It's not enough. All evening, she hasn't been able to breathe, hasn't been able to think, hasn't been able to break through the fog - _whywouldtheychoose-_thebest_-yougotthatfrom-_thebest_-wouldn'tsetmyselfonvollun-_thebest - that's invaded her mind.

Dropping her knife from its lethal stance, Clove lunges her torso flat against Cato's with less understanding, less foresight, of her actions than she's ever moved with before. Her cells have never known this sort of flammable recklessness that's spent the night permeating her skin. She'll wish later that she'd taken a sip of the drink that Gregoric had offered her. Alcohol would make a convenient scapegoat for this inexplicable idiocy. Drunk as she feels, though, it's some other sort of idiocy altogether that motivates her to sear her lips into those of Cato Ludwig.

Still buried deep, her sanity would continue screaming had it not lost its voice.

* * *

Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this so far, especially to my amazing reviewers: Ombre de la Lune, HungerGamesHarryPotter7887, GottaLoveMEgan, TheRulerandTheKiller, luvxas37, HungerGamesFan12, Jesus the Gardener, Orange Pudding, fanfictionfan, TheToothFairy92, Frances Odair, ammiewilson, and thatiismahogany. I really appreciate it :)

I'm having a hard time deciding what I think about this chapter, so I'd love to hear any feedback you might have, positive or negative.

Thanks again for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

Surprise keeps Cato's lips frozen for only the shortest of moments. In no longer than a few seconds, he's sprung out of shell shock and begun to move against Clove's writhing form, to respond to her every furious touch in full force.

It's not a conscious decision that closes her eyes, that shuts them away from the world, but the fog that's been following her all night. She feels as though its mist has finally succeeded in enveloping her mind, in taking over her muscles, in stealing away her senses.

And the worst part is that Clove can't bring herself to care. Not about the heat of Cato's mouth against hers, nor the desperate battle waged between them. It takes her a while to realize that they're kissing at all, violent as their embrace quickly becomes. They attack each other in every way that their bare hands can think of - the crescents clawed by her nails into the skin between his shoulder blades, the long chunks of dark hair tugged in every which painful way by his wrenching fingers. His hands move down lower, curling around her curves until they reach the hem of her tank top. She should stop him from pulling his palms beneath its formfitting fabric, but, then again, if she was in a right enough mind to do that, she'd likely halt this entire encounter. So she doesn't. So she digs deeper into his back as he does his best to press a path of bruises on her hips like footsteps on a forest trail. Proof, she'll realize later as she scrubs uselessly against them in the shower, of his presence there.

Were Clove more herself at the moment, she might have smirked at the groan that travels from his throat into hers. High as she's grown off of the foreign array of emotions that have invaded her system tonight, though, she ends up wrestling her tongue more harshly against his instead. Escalating their fight for dominance.

Possibly for the same purpose, Cato's thighs tangle with hers. Clove registers a moment later that his legs have maneuvered themselves into a position of power, that he's about to flip her over. Mouth still frantic against his, ignoring any need for oxygen, she thrashes about in resistance. She won't let him steal control from her. She can't. Still, she can feel him about to slam her beneath him into the floor.

Clove's eyes snap open. Some nonexistent window ushers in a gust of a wind that diffuses the thick, mind-numbing fog from its concentration around her.

Mistaking the removal of her mouth from his for a much-needed break for breath, Cato moves his attention down to her neck, biting into her collarbone, scorching its flesh, and altogether missing the unadulterated horror that's contorted Clove's mouth, eyes, and forehead.

_What _is she doing?

As off guard as Cato was caught by the abruptness of her ardor, the suddenness of her struggle manages to catch him equally unprepared.

Voice low, gruff, and a bit strained, he asks her the same question that she can't stop demanding of herself.

_What are you doing?_

She doesn't answer either inquisitor. Mute, Clove opts for the alternative of tearing her arms loose from their tight clasp around him, then herself from his firm hold. Or she attempts to, anyhow. Quickly adjusting to the unexpectedness of her attempted escape, Cato grabs at her wrist and strengthens his grip. He cocks an eyebrow at her.

"Where do you think you're going?" She shuts her ears to the husky quality of his tone.

Without response or warning, Clove kicks out at his chest with all of the vigor that her foot can muster. She knows better than to waste a moment when he doubles back at the impact with a pained grunt. Extending her leg for one more kick, this one directed at his face, she takes the opportunity to jerk her arm free, reclaim her discarded knife, and run. She runs without any concrete idea of where she's headed, without any planned objective other than that of fleeing this house and the hell raging within its walls.

Fortunately, however, hell, with its clamor and crowds and chaos, provides a myriad of camouflage. Once she reenters the hoards of people gathered in Andromeda's living room, a mass that has only increased since she last saw it, Clove knows that her flight won't be too difficult. That knowledge doesn't stop her from increasing her pace once the outdoor air welcomes her back to fluent thought and sanity. Neither does her uncertainty over whether or not Cato is chasing her at all. With as many girls he has sick with lust over him, she highly doubts that he'll take the time to pursue her.

Small mercies.

Although the breeze hasn't warmed any since it last brushed against her skin, Clove's blood refuses to cool.

* * *

There's blood shining on his lower lip, a purple mark forming near his left eye, a storm of curse words thundering from his tongue, and a grin splitting his face when Cato reenters the bustle of the party. Busy pounding across the room, he doesn't permit anyone's stare to confine him for more than a few brief seconds. Nevertheless, it doesn't require any great span of time for him to render a good portion of his peers tense with alarm at the predatory curve of his lips. To prove that it's the most unsettling of his features.

Cato's cerulean blue eyes, burning bright with embers of rage and lust, scan the crowd with a hunter's attention. Gone. If he knows Clove, she won't have wasted a moment to linger about here. No, he'd bet money that the skid marks she might as well have left etched into the floor of the front doorway have already begun cooling. Fists clenched, his feet scream for the chance to chase her. In her stead, he locates Achates - a more genial, if not as satisfying, find.

Snatching his drink from him, Cato ignores his friend's wry protest and takes a long swig of its contents. The liquor doesn't do a thing, he quickly discovers, to dispel Clove's taste from his senses.

Achates turns away from the pale female figure nestled into his side and examines Cato's disgruntled appearance. Amused skepticism narrows his eyes. "I didn't know Andie had it in her."

Easily as plenty of people might attribute his newly acquired blemishes to a minor brawl, he should have guessed that Achates would figure otherwise. Cato has to admit that he appreciates the unusual opportunity to inform him that his powers of observation come up a bit short at the moment.

"She doesn't." With a jerk of his chin, he signals to the plump red couch on which Andromeda is sitting with Gregoric. Even if the girl had somehow managed to discover a trick to existing in two places at once, though, anyone acquainted with her would have difficulty attributing such wreckage to her soft hands. Buoyant giggles somehow rise above the boisterous noise that's taken over her house.

Against his better judgment, he proceeds to look around the room for his missing psychopath of a training partner one more time. She won't be anywhere nearby. He knows that. Still, Cato's eyes shift around the space's periphery.

Achates's eyebrows shoot up in stretch towards his cropped bangs. "You don't mean that you were with-" Apparently, garnering all the answer that he needs from the look on Cato's face, an odd combination of smugness and insanity, he tapers off. "I just-_Clove_? Really?" Cato doesn't know that he's ever witnessed Achates dare to question his beloved logic. His shaggy bronze hair waves as he shakes his head in disbelief. "Sorry, man, I just didn't think - I mean, she's never exactly seemed like the affectionate type." His brow furrows. "Especially in regard to you."

Cato has a difficult time believing that 'affection' had anything to do with Clove's unexpected attack. "Just let me know if you see her."

"That I can do," he says with a swift nod before returning his focus to his fair skinned companion.

Abandoning the spent cup, Cato skirts his consideration over to Andie's reclined figure. The idea of returning to her plays briefly across his mind, but he shakes it away without much thought. He's not in the mood to come up with an explanation for his brief absence with Clove, nor for his battered state - and definitely not to put up with Aldrin. Just a glimpse of his conceited face is enough to leave a snarl pressing at Cato's facial muscles.

His ears realize before his eyes that he's being watched as well.

Sighted, he hears the call of his name interrupt Andie's steady emission of giggles. With a small groan, he meets her eyes, watches the way that they brighten upon noticing his return. The way that the boy at her side visibly stiffens. Peaks of Cato's fetus snarl poke through the holes in his harsh grin. Then again, he's always enjoyed stealing things from Aldrin.

Making his way over to the couch, he can tell that it won't be any insurmountable challenge to do so. There was never any doubt, of course, but it's still gratifying to watch as Andie unconsciously shifts her knee away from his substitute's touch. Not even a word from him yet, and already she's begun to veer her body towards his.

Cato claims the space between them on the cushions. Words a wealth of insincerity, he flashes an apology at Aldrin for bumping him slightly aside in the process.

"We were just wondering where you got off to," Andie says, her breath warm against his face.

"Had to settle something with Clove," he explains shortly, leaving no room for any request for elaboration; not from her and not from himself. Already, his training partner has managed to establish an irritating presence in his mind. From at least a mile away at this point, her fake smile still seems to mock him.

Andie traces the bruise that's taken up residency above his nose. Concern leaks from her every pore, but she otherwise obeys his tone and remains silent.

Gregoric pipes in from her other side, bound by no such scruples. "I wouldn't worry about it, Andie. They can barely say hello to each other without adding in an attempt at bodily harm for the fun of it."

Choosing to ignore the quip, Cato leans in closer to Andromeda. He presses his mouth against hers, not paying much mind to the soft sensation of her plump pink lips. Over her shoulder, he has a clear view of Gregoric's face. Its progressive reddening proves to provide a much higher entertainment value.

It takes work to swallow his smirk when Andromeda elicits a high pitched moan into his mouth. Gregoric darkens a shade, cheeks mutating from peaches to apples. Cato strokes a fond hand through the golden waves that have flooded around his face in a smooth curtain. Always so cooperative.

"And where's your lovely training partner now?" Aldrin's harsh voice jars Andie away from him and into a warm blush at the reminder of their audience.

Cato shrugs his shoulders jerkily, face growing hard again. He should have guessed that Gregoric would take his reluctance to provide further information as an invitation to demand it. "She had to leave."

"That's too bad," the long legged girl clinging to his side says, sounding genuinely disappointment. "I didn't even get the chance to speak two words to her.

Cato chokes back a chuckle at the idea of her trying to hold even a fraction of a conversation with Clove.

"What, it got to be past her bedtime?" Gregoric asks, challenging him with a raised eyebrow of feigned bemusement.

"Clove's not real big on parties." His hand rolls around the hem of Andie's short skirt.

Pink faces glow on his each side, one heated by hostility and the other by shyness.

"Funny. That's not what she said when I asked her to come."

Red seems to bleed into Cato's sight. "Well, apparently, you disappointed her." Fingers continuing to work at Andromeda's thigh, he otherwise ignores her. Luckily, she doesn't seem to notice her use as a pawn.

"Well, we can't all be as popular as you, can we, Ludwig?" The way that Gregoric relaxes a bit more comfortably into the couch cushion before continuing readies Cato for the blow that he's no doubt about to suffer. No one, not even an idiot like Aldrin, could look that smug for no good reason. "Tell me, how does your brother do with the ladies? Can't imagine that he'd- "

His vision goes bloody. Shooting over Andromeda's thin figure, his hand snaps out to strangle Gregoric's neck, to force the words, the allusion to his joke of a brother, back down his throat.

A pitchy squeak jolts the rage from his eyes. Loosening his grip, he turns back to see the fingertips of his other hand clenched deeply into Andie's leg. Apparently, somewhat painfully.

He releases her limb and begins to consider the pros and cons of leaving to work his frustration out on the willing girl he can find. The idea dies a quick death when Gregoric earns a rare glare from Andie. His mood suddenly lightens.

"Thanks for coming, Greg," she says with as many daggers in her voice as her candy sweet disposition will grant her consent to use. "But I think you should probably leave now. You wouldn't want to say anything you'll regret tomorrow after you sober up." Knotting her fingers through Cato's she stands with nods towards the stairway. From the clenching of Aldrin's jaw, he'd guess that he's not the only one well aware of its proximity to her bedroom.

Looking back over his shoulder briefly before ascending to the second floor with Andie, he throws a quick grin in his rival's direction.

Cato's triumph doesn't live long. This victory should, he's learned through years of fucking with Aldrin, yield more satisfaction. An almost equally long history of flat out fucking Andie tells him that, if nothing else, the experience of lowering her nude body down onto her pink comforter should bring him some pleasure.

All he reaps is boredom.

* * *

The rocky terrain might have given her feet trouble in the darkness were her soles not so familiar with its every peak and crevice. Inarguably, her hill lacks the luxury rampant in her prior escape destination. Not a piece of patio furniture or well-groomed greenery awaits her when she reaches its crest. Still, as Clove nestles herself down into the grass's chilled blades, her muscles loosen. Her lips curve.

No noise, save crickets. No companions, save the small animals and insects that scuttle in the distance. No giggling at all.

Now that she's snapped out of her ridiculous bout of insecurity, she wants to hit herself for not coming here in the first place. Her mouth cinches into a tight frown. Humiliating may describe the lapse more aptly. Clenching her eyelids shut, Clove bars backs thoughts of the insanity provoked by her father's belittling.

Every time. Every time he visits, he leaves her feeling as though she's nothing more than one of those squirrel or rabbits currently hiding close by. Every time he leaves, she vows that it will never happen again. She cannot, however, claim that forcing herself on an arrogant blonde asshole has ever been a part of that ritual.

Curling over onto her side and digging her cheek into the cool earth, she fights back a shiver. The fault of the cold, of course. She ignores the defensiveness disfiguring her thoughts; ignores the phantoms of her heated exchange with Cato, the way that the ghosts of his hands and mouth insist on breathing against her. If he hadn't left a scrapbook of bruises to color her figure, she'd ignore the experience completely.

Not for the first time, Clove curses her training partner's existence.

She's beginning to remember now why she'd ventured to Andromeda's party in the first place. Solitude may suit her, but it does nothing to block out unpleasant musings, reminisces better ignored. The frenzied touches she can dismiss easily enough. Her lips clench painfully together, rather, at the thought that it took prompting from _him _to bring her back to her senses. As if she needs him to tell her that she's the best. As if she needs validation from anyone.

The blame for this horror of a night, she decides, lays mostly with Gregoric. If he hadn't found it necessary to let her know about that inane party, none of this would have happened. What would have occurred, Clove is not exactly sure, but she's fairly certain that it wouldn't have involved Cato Ludwig's tongue.

Rolling her head back against a hard mound of green-clothed dirt, she waits for the sun to rise and the first train of the morning to depart.

A rabbit scurries into visibility several paces away, its feet light against the ground.

Mouth relaxing enough to twitch, Clove reaches down for her knife.

Target practice never hurts her mood.

* * *

Fit and flexible. Aggressive but ultimately submissive. Andromeda shouldn't have bored him. She should have sated him, should have exiled all thoughts of his training partner from his head, should have given him a fraction of the coital fucking bliss he sees echoed onto her face as she smoothes out her tangled golden hair.

He can't even claim muted contentment.

* * *

Clove's house welcomes her with hollowness. By the time that she climbs the steps up to its porch, her body has grown tired, her eyelids heavy, her hair tussled, and her clothes creased by hours spent laying calm and conscious on her hill. She still takes care to check her father's room. Gone. With the door left ajar, it doesn't take much effort to notice the sterile interior past its threshold: bed made, personal effects nonexistent, human warmth absent.

She'd prefer to believe the reality presented by his chamber, that he hadn't come home for even a minute, let alone for an entire day and night's time.

It doesn't take long, upon entering the bathroom, for her to regret her readiness to peal off her dirt coated clothing. She may have turned on the water, but its steam hasn't yet thickened enough to muffle her reflection in the mirror. Dark spots, imprinted in the shape of hands, mar the pale flesh of her hips, her waist.

Clinging to the only solace she can conjure to mind, Clove wonders what souvenirs she left on his bronzed back.

Finally, the shower succeeds in pulling her away from the glass. A scowl still sours her lips. Her eyes, as though drawn by a magnetic force, persist in gravitating down to the belt of beaten blood vessels inked into her stomach. Clove raises the temperature of the water until its spray scalds her skin.

The bruises refuse to burn away.

* * *

Author's Note: First off, thank you so much to everyone who has been reading this so far, especially to those who reviewed the last chapter: HungerGamesHarryPotter7887, whathappenedtotruelove, Jesus the Gardener, RedSunsets, luvxas37, TheRulerandTheKiller, thatiismahogany, TheToothFairy92, Orange Pudding, Marina, Frances Odair, GottaLoveMEgan, Messy Ink, and, of course, to everyone who commented anonymously. You're all amazing! I really appreciate the time you took to let me know your thoughts about chapter eight.

Secondly, I'm really sorry that this chapter is shorter than most. Hopefully, the next one that I post will be a bit longer.

On a different note, I have basically no experience writing makeout scenes. If that's made very clear by my attempt at including one at the beginning of this chapter, then I apologize. I'll do my best to improve in the future :)

Thank you so much again for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

* * *

From the moment that the harsh midday light drawls its way though her bedroom window to prod her from sleep, Clove decides that she will call a truce with the sun. Even as its glow plants the seeds of a groan in her throat and a sting in her eyes, she's begun to clench back her resentment at the burning mass so hostile towards her pale skin. It will shine no matter how much frigidity she emanates. It will remain bright no matter how threateningly she handles the dagger that her slumbering fingers managed to retrieve from underneath her pillow. All she can do is channel its bright rays away from the memories that she'd rather not see illuminated.

Her father. Cato. Her father's words. Cato. Her father's scorn. CatoCatoCato-

Cinching her lips together, Clove tightens her grip around her knife. Forces her attention to its sharp, lithe form, its pitiless point, its smooth surface.

Her lips still contort into a grimace. She's clutched this blade in the midst of plenty of violent daydreams, ones that have featured a variety of stars, methods, and mindsets. Not once before, though, has she ever experienced this desire to inflict a stab wound on some tender piece of her own skin - especially not in penance for such completely self-inflicted stupidity as she'd committed the night before. And that is the only word that she can use to describe the mistake of kissing Cato. Stupid. Clove has thought so, with a condescending roll of her eyes, through each testimony that she's overheard from his multitude of intimate partners, and she continues to think so now that she has a testimony of her own to tell. Not that she ever, under any circumstances, will.

Straightening her posture, Clove darts her arm out. Her knife hits the target hung against the opposite wall with a satisfying bump.

Not that she'll ever, under any circumstances, even think about it again herself. Not ever.

She's grateful for the sun if only for the forgotten dreams of frenzy that it frightens away from the forefront of her mind.

* * *

The room is sparsely decorated, without much to characterize it. The walls are eggshell and the bedding is white and, since his sword collection's move down to his family's weapons room, the shelves are empty. Were it not for the moaning pair of bodies undulating on the bed pushed up into the far right corner, the space would lack any semblance of life whatsoever.

Of the two mouths hovering against each other, one grunts with much more fervor than the other. The latter can hardly claim any passion whatsoever.

Sex has never brought Cato such boredom.

It shouldn't bother him that she yields so easily to his touch, but it does. It frustrated him when Andie did the day before and it irks him when this nameless brunette does now. No fight. No power play. No challenge. And he has no idea why that's suddenly a problem.

Rolling off of her voluptuous body and onto his mattress, Cato turns away from the inexplicably inadequate girl with a frown that screams mute stories of aggravation and disconcertion.

"Leave," he says flatly. He doesn't bother to look over, to ensure that she follows his command. Her scurrying departure resonates as clearly as the insulted glare that she attempts to etch into his skull.

"Sorry about your back," she mutters on her way out the door, not sounding particularly apologetic at all.

The chuckle that rings from Cato's lips is as cold as it as amused. "Forget it." He quickly dismisses the idea of informing her that not one of the wounds scarring the hard surface of his back - not the remnants of the lashing he'd received for his tardiness at the Academy and certainly not the faint scratch marks left by a slender set of crawling, clawing fingers - is her work. He doesn't care enough to trouble himself with her name, let alone her conceptions.

Releasing a long groan, Cato flips his head over into a pillow.

* * *

Weekends rarely pass quickly for Clove. They're more often slow, snail-like affairs that leave her muscles aching for a return to the Academy, a return to routine.

Not this one. This one might as well have had the duration of a blink of her eyelids, a snap of her fingers, a toss of her knife.

Clove's legs descend into the kitchen Sunday night without a quirk of yearning or impatience. Only dread and disbelief. Did she not know better, she would have sworn that she'd spent the last two days in some sort of robbing time warp, rather than in a daze of knife-throwing and jogging and scrubbing in the shower at marks that won't disappear. Even now, after roughly seven showers in less than two days, the bruises remain. She knows that her violent efforts to dispel them are useless, that they won't buckle under her attacks. That the mere idea is impossible. Not a piece of that knowledge weakens her desire to erase the shadows of Cato's hands, of her own idiocy, from her body.

She prepares her salad with more care than usual that night, slicing each ingredient precisely, tossing each leaf of lettuce assiduously, and then eating each bite of the freshly prepared dish thoroughly. Clove will readily admit that it's a silly ritual; superstitious even. Nevertheless, she chews diligently, well aware that she'd skipped her nightly salad the Friday before and unwilling to ever allow that Friday to repeat itself.

* * *

Normal. This day, Clove tells herself the instant that her eyes peal open the next morning, will be completely normal. She reminds herself of this vow when her toothbrush bends to the tension in her fingers, and again when the first elastic that she grabs snaps mid-stretch from its too-tight clasp around her melted chocolate locks.

She will spend the day at the Academy. She will eat a salad for lunch. Cato will, at some point, try his hand at an unintentional imitation of a Neanderthal.

A completely normal Monday.

All of that extensive mental preparation for such an average start to the week, however, does nothing to weaken the brief wave of shocked panic that comes close to overwhelming her when she finds Cato waiting languidly in her kitchen - exactly as he seems to do, lately, on any completely normal day.

Steeling herself, she dons an expression of apathy and slips into recognizable terrain.

Cato wasn't sure of exactly what he'd been expecting when he'd walked into Clove's house that morning. It must have been something appealing though - appealing enough to call a smug smirk onto his mouth, enough to warrant the excitement with which he'd claimed a seat at her kitchen table. Unrealistic enough to leave him vaguely infuriated by the reality that quickly introduces itself; reality being a frustratingly straight faced Clove who gives him no further greeting than an eye roll and a dose of utter disregard when she enters the room. Cato blinks, clenching his fists with nonplused annoyance. He knows his training partner, knows her better than to believe that she'd succumb to a blush or a stutter after plunging her tongue into his mouth. But this- he can't remember a girl so ready to pretend that she's never met him, never mind than that she'd ever fucking touched him.

When she does speak to him a moment later, it's with so much indifference that, did he not know better, Cato might have wondered if she'd gotten drunk enough at Andie's party to forget the night altogether. Never mind that there hadn't been a drop of alcohol tainting her breath.

"I wasn't kidding the other day about having you arrested," she says on her way past his reclined form. Not a spared glance in his direction accompanies the flippant threat. Cato's knuckles whiten. He glares at her cabinet-bound figure, shaking the air with a cold chuckle.

"Go ahead," he replies. "Run to a Peacekeeper. I'm sure there's one capable of protecting you, little girl."

Tense composure reins on her features when she, very slowly, turns around to face him. With some satisfaction, he decides that she probably needed time to collect herself. Even now, Cato can see sharp shards of ice poking through her calm exterior.

"I'm fully _capable _of finishing you off myself."

His smirk widens. "I wouldn't say that you finished anything at Andie's party."

A different sort of ice comes to seize her, the sort that stills a person's muscles, that traps one in immobility.

Despite his irritation with Clove, Cato steals the opportunity to drawl his gaze along the length of her frozen body. His inspection lingers on the curve of her slim waist and the clothing-concealed bruises that line the flesh there. Bruises left by his hands.

"Look," she shatters her silence with a stone-clad word, bucking away from the horrified paralysis that had seized her. "That party never happened. I was never there. I never showed up and I certainly never laid a finger on you." Her arms cross in rigid resolution. "Are we clear?"

Through a mirthless grin, he says, "Don't tell me the bruises have already faded." Relishing in the way that she grows even tighter, Cato yanks himself out of his chair to stalk towards her.

"As far as I'm concerned," she says with a challenging cock to her flat voice, "the bruises don't exist." The reply comes out cramped, revealing no room for argument.

"Can't say the same about the claw marks on my back. I should have known you'd like it rough."

Her pale blue eyes harden with steel. "What you should know is that I'll cut your tongue clean out of your mouth if you ever mention last Friday night again."

Although entirely unamused, he can't stop grinning. Snaking a hand out, he reaches to brush the pads of his fingertips against her undoubtedly darkened waist. Before he can grab her, though, shake her, force her to admit that she finds this game they've started no less exhilarating than he does, she turns on her heel.

"You should also know," her harshly sweet voice carries behind her from the front doorway, "that we're both going to be late if we don't leave right now." Malicious pleasure twinges its way into her tone. "And I can't imagine that you'd want that. Unless you're in the market for a fresh set of whip marks to match last week's."

The urge to beat the stubbornness out of her with several hard blows to her pretty head might have proven too tempting for his fists to quench if a darted glance at his watch hadn't proven her point valid. There's no reason to volunteer for further punishment; his back already has enough decoration.

His vocal chords, however, see no point in indulging her with such leniency on their walk. "I never took you for a coward."

Incredulity shades the look she throws him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Think about the first thing we learned at the Academy."

"I'm fully aware of the futility of compassion, thank you very much," she says. A soft soundtrack, the noise of her feet beating into the unyielding sunlit ground, hums behind the reply.

"The other first thing then."

A comprehending smirk contorts her mouth. "Nice try, but I don't think that the Academy was referring to sexual intercourse when they told use to 'never leave a job unfinished."

"That's too bad," he says, exaggerating his leer just to see how angry he can get her.

Disgust dictates her expression. "Unless you have some sort of bizarre grudge against your tongue, I'd stop talking."

"Unless you want a sword through your chest," he retorts with a raised eyebrow, "I wouldn't put your knife anywhere near my mouth."

A sharp crunch gnaws at his ears. Lowering his eyes, he manages to catch a short glimpse of Clove's foot slamming into a rock that happened to reside along its path.

It's a start, he notes as they start up the Academy steps, but he's still not anywhere close to stealing her beloved control away from her. The corners of his mouth rise. Not yet.

* * *

Clove's glare grows darker with each step she takes; darker than her hair, darker than her bruises, darker than even the blood stained air waiting for her in the Academy.

It turns coal black when she sees the sign pinned up onto the gym door.

For a horrifying span of seconds, Clove worries that she'll be confined to a chair in some random viewing room for the day, barred from seeking any release other than the vicarious stimulation gained from watching former tributes tear each other apart. Her fist clenches, beginning to ache at the knifeless emptiness in her palm. She needs Medea, needs the knife's rage, needs to warm its handle with the angry blood pooling through her fingers. She needs to throw something lethal at Cato's face.

And, if it weren't for the notice instructing their level to assemble out on the track for a morning run, she would have gotten exactly that satisfaction. Exactly that comfort.

Then again, she also would have been stuck in a closed space with Cato all morning. The tips of her nails relax slightly against her pink flesh. She'd sacrifice almost anything at the moment to get away from him and his asinine comments.

Clove slips away from her partner, using her petite size to disappear into the swarm of trainees. Her lips twist into a cold smile. A few hours away from Cato nearly makes up for the forced separation from her knives.

The doors are persuaded with an easy push to welcome her back into the fresh air. Blinking away the sun's jarring greeting, she makes her way over to the track. There's no doubt in her mind that Cato is fast; she'd expect nothing less of the Academy's golden boy. Not to mention the advantage that his long legs give him over in respect to stride-length. Still, there's even less doubt in her mind that avoiding him will be a fairly simple task, that she's swift enough, practiced enough, to evade him if necessary. Which it might not be. A betraying backwards flicker of her eyes tells her that he's already fallen into conversation with the genial-faced boy - an adequate trainee but no one impressive to deserve much attention from her - who always seems to be hanging around him.

Stepping out onto the thin dirt of the track, Clove accelerates her pace, determined to catch up to the trainees who had arrived earlier, started sooner.

No matter how fast as she hastens, however, snippets of her earlier conversation with Cato still succeed in catching up to her. She should have known that he would enjoy reminding her of her severe judgment lapse, that he'd find entertainment in her discomfiture. Pounding her feet against the ground with more force than necessary, she allows decision to clench her jaw.

_Completely normal Monday._

She'll just have to refrain from giving him the satisfaction.

* * *

Accomplishment colors Clove's short breaths when she reenters the gym; accomplishment with the pace she'd kept, the people she'd passed, and her impeccably executed avoidance of Cato.

Pulling her sack off of her shoulders, Clove gropes through its interior, eager to retrieve her water bottle. Without wasting any time, she closes her lips around its opening and begins to greedily imbibe the cool liquid inside. She indulges her exertion-dried throat until the bottle has lost nearly half of its water-weight. Finally, with a soft sigh, she pulls it away from her mouth and proceeds to press it against the pulse point of her wrist. A sensation more placid than she'd expected to feel for quite a while sets her shoulders into a relaxed slump.

"That was some getaway Friday."

Tension comes rushing back into her muscles. That nightmare of an evening just won't leave her alone. Whirling around her head around, Clove throws a glare at the figure who saw fit to intrude into her space. "I think you're using the term 'getaway' a bit liberally."

Aside from the sweat that flattens his dark curls around the flushed skin of his temples, Gregoric's face reveals no more fatigue than her own. A shame, in Clove opinion. He'd likely be much easier to stand if he lacked the energy to speak. "And what would you call your sudden exit?" Leaning casually against the wall, he quirks a dubious eyebrow at her.

"Not any of your concern." An aggravated scowl depresses her mouth. Gregoric's false grin is almost as infuriating as Cato's chronic smirk; even more so when it looks as though it's about to emit words. Not in any mood to put up with his pathetic cracks at cajoling information out of her, Clove rushes to continue. "But, if you must know, I wasn't feeling well."

"Better now, I hope?" he asks, with about as much belief in his voice as she'd imagine he would use if discussing District Twelve's likelihood of producing a victor.

"Well, I _was._"

Gregoric chuckles insincerely. "You ran away-sorry." He pauses to raise his hands in mock apology. "You _got sick _so quickly the other night that we never got to finish our conversation."

"Pity."

"So," he says, ignoring her sarcastic interjection. "I thought I'd fix that now."

Busy storing her water bottle away into her bag, Clove doesn't bother to look at him as she repeats herself. "Pity."

Façade shimmering for a flash, his grin falters. He takes a few moments resuscitate it back into life before replying. "Look, I just wanted to give you one last opportunity to prevent yourself from making a colossal mistake."

"And what would that be?"

He pushes himself off from the wall to step closer to her. "Rejecting me as your training partner."

Clove rolls her eyes before moving to walk wordlessly away.

Not particularly worried by the rapidly expiring shelf life of her tolerance, however, Gregoric doesn't hesitate to jog in front of her. "I don't understand why you're being so difficult about this."

"Funny," she replies, her tone poisonous. "I could say the same to you."

He infuses his next words with all the warmth of a rabid dog's panting. "Hey, I'm doing you a favor here. There are plenty of people who would be happy to have me as a partner, but I'm putting off my decision. For you."

Clove releases a tense exhale. "I've told you that I don't want to transfer partners in every single way that I know how." Short of carving the words into his forehead, an idea that's gaining appeal with each breath he takes in her direction.

"I know. I'm anxiously waiting for you to run out and agree."

Her eyes dart with violent longing over to the display of knives.

Possibly becoming aware of the bloody turn of her thoughts, he tempers his grin with a note of gravity. "In all seriousness, though," his speech persists through her interjected snort of laughter, "are you really this committed to spending quality time with Ludwig?"

Clove hesitates. She would love the chance to get away from Cato, from his unwanted reminders of her idiocy, from the marks that she knows for a fact her nails scratched into his back. Still, Gregoric hardly seems like an attractive substitute. For any number of reasons.

"And what makes you think that I'd want to spend quality time with you?"

Phoniness floods back onto his face. "Aside from my dashing good looks?"

"I'm not transferring to a weaker partner," she says through irritation cinched lips. "No matter how much I'd enjoy banning Cato from my life."

"_I am not _weaker than Ludwig." Genuineness smears his face into a snarl.

Before she can remind him of the very publicly presented proof that had disputed that claim right in front of her, Julius's gravelly cadence calls them to attention.

"Break's over." Clove, like the rest of her peers, stands rigidly, waiting for further instruction. With only an hour until lunch, she can't help but hope that he'll direct them to use the short gap of time left for solitary activity. That she'll have the chance to seek solace in Medea rather than agony in Cato's presence. She hopes it with so much vehemence that it takes her a few moments to register Julius's words when he grants her wish's fruition. A rare smile comes close to curving onto her face.

"After lunch," Julius continues, "you'll engage in randomized combat. Listen up for your opponent. I won't be repeating myself." This time a smile does manage to overtake her, a smile of relief and unexpected elation. Just speaking to Cato this morning had proven her plan to forget ever attending Andromeda's party problematic. She can't imagine what damage actual physical contact could wreak on her psyche.

The names he reads off largely pass by her ears, most of them striking her as fairly irrelevant. She takes note of her own assignment, bookmarks the surname 'Gellar' in her brain, but otherwise tunes out. Despite themselves, though, her ears can't help but revive at the sound of Cato's name.

"Ludwig and Aldrin," Julius calls out between glimpses down at his list.

It's not a smile that wrangles her lips into motion now, but something much darker, something calculating.

Eager to claim Medea, she turns immediately to Gregoric upon their dismissal. "Beat Cato this afternoon," she says, her voice low with intent, "and I'll tell Calliope that I've changed my mind about your request."

She walks off then without waiting for a reaction.

The knives have already garnered a small group by the time she reaches their case, but no one protests when she goes to wrap her fingers around Medea. She strokes the blade with reverence. Caressing her handle, she feels more like herself than she has all weekend.

* * *

Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone reading this story! Especially to those who have reviewed: Marina, luvxas37, GottaLoveMEgan, xoxo .Amethyst. xoxo , HungerGamesHarryPotter7887, Ombre de la Lune, thatiismahogany, MarvelousMarvel, ClatoEverthorne, RiRiandHGLover, and, of course, all who have commented anonymously. You have no idea how much I appreciate your feedback.

Thanks again for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I am fully aware that I do not own _The Hunger Games._

* * *

Author's Note: I am so sorry that it's been so long since I last updated. Much longer than I ever thought I'd let it go. It took me a long time to figure out where I wanted to go after the last chapter (had a plan, started writing, realized it was an awful plan), but that's not any excuse for a several-month-long gap.

I'm especially sorry to everyone who messaged me asking when I was planning to update, since I think I (unintentionally) lied to a bunch of you. I honestly did think that I was going to update several months ago, and I apologize for not keeping that promise.

Anyway, if anyone's still interested in this story (and even remembers where I left the last chapter), here's chapter eleven! Hopefully, I'll be updating more frequently now. I officially know where I'm going to college, and am about to enter the second semester of my senior year, so I should have a lot more time for writing than I have so far this school year. In any case, my New Year's resolution will be to begin updating regularly again.

Sorry for the super long author's note! Hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter: xoxo . Amethyzt . xoxo, TwilightCharmedFaie, HungerGamesHarryPotter7887, PurpleFlyingToasters, thatiismahogany, luvxas37, GottaLoveMEgan, ImmortalPalomino, CurlyCue, sami. j. hoyer, ClatoEverthorne, brooke13243546, ImmortalPalomino, Chloe, ABC, becky199469, FadedAllure, Bewie, girlwiththeknives, Frances Odair, SafeEyesOpen, The Jade Empress, SO GOOD, themimiworld, everonica, tractor, accioyourheart, Clove-Plays-Clarinet, Alyss and the Bandersnatch, FunnyPuffins1600, mra, Ombre de la Lune, and everyone who commented anonymously.

* * *

Even if Achates Gellar didn't behave as if Cato had him bound in indentured servitude, Clove highly doubts that she would hold much respect for him. Never mind think him a suitable opponent.

Grin too toothy. Stance too lax. Disposition too friendly. His face - lips, dimples, forehead - actually creases with geniality.

Clove shudders.

And then, once he finishes the traverse across the gym to meet her, it gets worse. Out of all the opponents she could have been assigned, Julius had to give her the only trainee she'd ever met who appears to think a handshake a proper pre-cursor to a fight. As opposed to a snarl or a blade or anything that would make her feel a bit less nauseous. No matter what taunts she had flung against Cato after his fight with her father, she'd never expected to see a trainee actually use such a greeting.

Staring at the proffered limb, her eyes go blank with a skeptical hope that he's volunteering for dismemberment.

"Achates Gellar," he narrates the gesture. Apparently she's not so lucky.

Unwilling to succumb to what has to be either a trick or a disgrace, she makes no motion to entangle her fingers with his.

At her silence, his lips pull up in unfazed amusement. "And you're Clove. Clove Fuhrman, right?"

Her chin gives a slow nod.

"Not much point in fighting, is there?" he asks with a disconcerting amount of friendliness still filling the lines of his face. "If you can beat Cato, I think we can both be pretty damn sure you can beat me."

Clove eyes him warily. "I can beat most people, but I'll give you that you're the first to readily admit it." If this is his attempt at lulling her into a false security, she's unimpressed.

"I like to think of myself as a realist."

She'd like to think of him as pathetic. "You really expect me to believe that you're not even going to try to beat me?"

He blinks. "Of course I'll _try_." Whatever stretches his lips into a grin is much warmer than what often motivates Cato's. "Wouldn't bet on myself, though." He waits a beat before adding, "Neither would Cato."

Must Cato Ludwig infect her every conversation? Curious in spite of herself, though, she cants her head in a demand for clarification. "And why would you say that?"

He shrugs. "No reason. Except for the fact that he actually did place money on you winning."

Clove swallows a snort of amusement. She had heard that there was some sort of betting ring that some of the trainees wasted their money on, but had never contemplated her place in it. There's something thrilling in thinking that she exerts control over a person's pocket money. Especially when that person is Cato.

Apparently they're both invested in the other's fight. And she will admit that, as much as she'd usually resent the assignment of such an inferior opponent, she might appreciate the room Gellar leaves for distraction. Just this once. For about the fifth time in the last minute, her eyes mutiny over to where Cato and Gregoric have begun exchanging glares and pretended civilities.

She doesn't regret her deal with Gregoric, won't allow herself to. She's also not sure of who she wants to win. It doesn't, she supposes, particularly matter. Either way she'll have the best male trainee the Academy has to offer as her partner. Why should she care whether it's Idiot 1 or Idiot 2? As though a silly kiss matters. As though taunts should irritate her.

She voices none of this inner monologue to Cato's lap dog. "He _bet_ on me?"

The boy's shrug is nearly as infuriating as his sly half-smile.

Had Julius's harsh voice not called them to attention, she might have warned Gellar not to throw the fight for the sake of Cato's wallet. Not that he stands a chance anyway.

Her glance rebels once again. Cato and Gregoric both look taut, impatient. She doesn't realize that her face wears the same narrowed eyes and clenched jaw.

* * *

Clove imagines that, if Julius had any idea of just how little effort she and Gellar were putting into this fight, they'd both be due for a severe whipping. Likely more lashes than she's ever earned her unmarred back (she refuses to acknowledge the finger-shaped bruises already present).

They play at violence, decorating each other's skin with blood, and allow the blades of their knives to glint in threat. They do all of this, while darting their eyes every now and then over to the corner in which Cato and Gregoric engage in their own dance of lunge-and-evade. She has to cede a morsel of admiration for the way Achates's mind works; he seems to grasp as easily as she that, if they finish too quickly, there will be enough time left in the training day to switch them to different partners. Different partners who may complicate their covert observation of Cato and Gregoric's battle. Out of politeness, they pretend not to notice each other's frequent flickered glances over to their far right.

Once again, Clove supposes that she actually got rather lucky with her assignment. She doubts that anyone other than this pet of Cato's would care so much about a fight from which they were so physically removed.

Eyes meeting after an acceptable pretense of combat has passed between them, he nods at her. She bares her teeth in a grin and suddenly they're fighting in earnest, seeking an endgame.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Clove steps right over Achates Gellar's moaning body and walks breezily away. She ignores the faint chuckle that mangles his pained gasps.

She finds a place for herself against the wall a few feet from the pair of fighting Neanderthals that have, somehow, become a part of her everyday existence. And then she watches as the puppets wail against one another, as they delude themselves into thinking that any of this revolves around them. She knows better. This fight decides just as much about her future, as it does theirs. Therefore, since her future is clearly the more important one, she's the focal point of this afternoon.

They don't see the way her smirk dehumanizes them. It's wonderful to see Cato as nothing other than a tool, to forget that his presence had been enough to send her literally running away only a few hours ago. It's wonderful to know that he's just another one of her toys.

* * *

Each time he starts fighting Gregoric, Cato feels like he's never stopped. It's easy to block out the days, weeks, months, that pass between each of their fights, and fool himself into thinking that each dose of combat just adds onto the other. That, rather than several isolated events, they compound onto one another to form the most important fight he'll have at the Academy. Capital-vision, he supposes. As though life is a movie with an exact climax that determines the rest of the plot.

He wants the climax, drawn out as it's been, to go in his favor. He wants to stand over Gregoric with a blood-coated sword, and know that his superiority will never be called into question.

But they've been fighting for at least an hour now, longer than most everyone else, and neither is any closer to victory than the other. He grins as his sword swipes against Gregoric's skin. Red has always been his favorite color, and not even Andie wears it better than Aldrin. He'd take his rival's blood over Andromeda's lacy lingerie any day.

The triumph might register as a more satisfying one if he wasn't wearing at least as much blood himself.

And that's really all that he knows at the moment - the blood on his skin, the blood on Gregoric's, the sound of their swords hitting one another as they seek contact. Gregoric's glare and his own and the snarls on both their faces and the disconcerting, if vague, knowledge that they've never seemed more like the same person. It's like looking into a mirror at a dark haired, slightly inferior version of himself. Cato hardly even realizes that he's begun to growl. If he had, he might have seen Clove snickering from the sidelines at his transformation into the beast she'd always thought him. He hasn't noticed his training partner watching from the wall, at all, though. She's not a part of this fight. For the first time in weeks, she's nothing to him.

It goes on like that for a while. Swords meeting blow for blow, slicing sporadic wounds into any reachable piece of flesh, and nothing else existing.

* * *

Clove wonders if this qualifies as voyeurism. If so, she's fairly certain that Achates - standing silent and straight-faced several feet away - is equally guilty. She's never gotten this much pleasure out of simply watching a fight, never felt her own pulse race so as a spectator. A spot in the audience has too often before been marred by a desire to be fighting herself.

Her breath catches as Cato crushes the handle of his sword into the side of Gregoric's head. Beautiful. His responding fumble lasts only a moment before the tip of Gregoric's own weapon manages to form a reply.

After fighting Cato for so long herself, it's almost strange to see him fight someone with such a similar set of strategies and skills to his own. She can see why she and Cato, with their completely dissimilar styles, were paired with eachother. Clove can't remember a time that they've ever thought the same way about how combat should go. He and Gregoric - it's like watching twins fighting for dominance and nourishment in the womb. There's certainly enough blood.

She just can't decide which one she's betting on. Not that it particularly matters. All that matters is that, either way, she gets the best (male) trainee the Academy has to offer as her training partner.

She stares at the pair, knowing that each of them believes the sun rises and sets on whether or not he wins, but that she can't lose.

And so, unable to imagine her eyes ever tiring of the show before her, she keeps watching.

* * *

Cato hasn't felt more tired since he and Clove tested each other's endurance the month prior and ended up fighting right through lunch and into the Academy's closing minutes. _Swing his sword, dodge Gregoric's, and enjoy the outlier triumphs_. Right on cue, Julius's voice sounds to announce that the Academy must be closing in five minutes. _Swing his sword, dodge Gregoric's, and aim to kill._ He won't lose. He won't let Aldrin gain that advantage, that headway over him. Tributes will be chosen too soon to allow himself such a failure.

_Swing sword, dodge Gregoric's - _he wasn't supposed to trip.

* * *

Clove's eyes widen when Gregoric manages to stretch a foot out to trip Cato. Fixation freezes her breath. It's the worst timed bout of clumsiness she's ever seen.

She steals a look over to Achates in that snap of a second, and sees fear flickering over his otherwise blankly friendly face. She wonders if that's the feeling crawling through her gut, and wishes it away.

It's not, after all, as if she cares.

* * *

He trips and suddenly Gregoric has a grip on the advantage that they've been playing tug-of-war with all afternoon.

No. Cato's eyes widen with rage as Aldrin looms over him. No. He can't be about to lose. But even as he tells himself it's not possible for Gregoric to have gained such dominance, their swords say otherwise.

"Congratulations," Gregoric rasps out with a shaky smirk. "You're officially even more pathetic than your joke of a brother. Think about that when I have your ranking, your partner, your spot in the Games, while you sit at home with your _broth_-"

An almost inhuman roar breaks through Cato's throat and cuts through any words that Gregoric might have found to finish his sentence, and suddenly he's the one looming.

* * *

Clove watches the shift in their exchange with an intense attention that she's never been able to bestow upon any televised tribute. Gregoric had nearly won the fight; she'd seen the triumph on his face, the brief panicked defeat on Cato's. Then the dark haired trainee had interrupted his own grin to form a few words that she's certain he'll later regret. She can't imagine that anything else could have buoyed Cato so quickly into action. Familiar actions. A thrill runs through her as she sees him abandon his trademark moves for ones that she's signiatured. He breaks free from Gregoric in the same way in which she's managed to evade him so many times - using cunning rather than aggression. The brute emerges again, though, predictably and quickly enough. Finally knocking his opponent's sword out of his hands, he drops his own, and tackles him to the ground. Apparently a blade just wasn't good enough. Straddling Gregoric in a way that tempts her lips into a smirk, he proceeds to batter his face until blood and broken bones have rendered it unrecognizable. No talking. No snickering soliloquies of victory. Just his rage-blinded glare and insatiable fists.

It's exhilarating to observe and she has no idea why.

* * *

Cato doesn't stand until a sharp bell, signaling the Academy's closing, draws him automatically out of his mindless fury, and his knuckles away from Gregoric's thoroughly beaten flesh.

Without a word to the bloody mess beneath him, he stands, and walks away. He doesn't notice when Achates grabs his bag from its place against the wall, nor that Clove's eyes trace his unflinching tread. All he knows is that he won, and that he'd feel a hell of a lot happier about it if he could just beat his brother out of existence.

With that aim in mind, Cato doesn't go home. He doesn't go anywhere, really. Not to the house he shares with his - as Aldrin so accurately worded it - joke of a brother, and not to town or the quarry. He just walks to the whim of his feet and wishes that his triumph tasted better. It was hard-earned and well-wished-for and it shouldn't spread this sour sensation through his stomach.

Without knowing quite how he got there, he ends up mutilating the bark of a tree with his suddenly energetic foot. Kicking a tree, an opponent unlikely to ever flinch, let alone fall. All the better.

This victory wasn't the one he needed to secure himself a spot as tribute. He realizes that. He's fully aware that he and Gregoric fought for hours, that, by the time he finally managed to steal a victory, the trainers had probably lost interest and charted it off as yet another piece of proof that the two were virtually indistinguishable.

Heels, toes, sole - they all begin to ache, but continue their assault against the tree. As if he and Aldrin have ever been_ anything_ alike.

But, then again, he'd have the Academy liken him to Gregoric Aldrin over Jason Ludwig any day.

He keeps kicking, unsure and uninterested in whether it's his frustration with the fight or his hatred for his brother motivating his feet. Cato has never seen much of a use for reason.

After all, he's never been able to reason out why the fuck his brother would turn down the chance to represent District Two in the Hunger Games. He can still remember, at fourteen years old, standing in town with the rest of his district at the Reaping. Everyone had known that Jason Ludwig had been chosen to volunteer, Cato best of all. He'd basked in the knowledge for weeks, bathing in a potion of pride and jealousy.

But Jason hadn't volunteered. He'd just stood there when Tobias Fletcher's name was called. He'd let that name stand in the spot his should have taken, kept his head down, and refused to say a word.

As far as Cato is concerned, his brother had forfeited his name that day. Jason Ludwig no longer exists to him. All that he recognizes now was the weak coward that tainted his blood.

* * *

Clove rolls her eyes when she sees Achates gathering up Cato's things before following him - several circumspect minutes later - out the door. The ever faithful lapdog. Slinging her own bag over her back, she walks over to Gregoric's prone body and cocks her head.

Anger blazes from his silent figure, as they stare at one another.

And to think that she actually considered taking him up on his offer just to avoid Cato. She'd never have forgiven herself.

Limbs languid, she kneels down beside the quivering mess. He still doesn't speak, not even when she teases a fingertip against his cheek. The corners of Clove's mouth taunt him as she drags a drop of blood across his fist-marred features.

"Pathetic."

A few drops of his blood still lingering on her pointer-finger, she lifts herself up from the ground in the very way he can't find the strength to accomplish, and walks off.

Gregoric remains on the ground, blood dripping a path from his blackening eyes to his bruised jaw.

* * *

The next day, he's standing in her kitchen, acting normal, looking normal, and Clove isn't quite sure what to make of it. She pauses at the room's threshold. "I'm getting my locks changed."

Inspecting her fridge with a flimsy sort of interest, he throws a short glance at her before giving further attention to her supply of lettuce. "Don't bother. It won't help."

She rolls her eyes. "Of course it won't." Sarcasm makes such a handy crutch. It takes more effort than she'd like to admit for her to gather her breakfast without so much as a glance at him, enough of an effort that she can taste the blood her gnawed into her lower lip by her tense teeth.

Brushing past him, she manages to quirk her lips into a mangled smile. The alarm at the expression is palpable, if subtle, on his face. She basks in the way he tightens his muscles and narrows his eyes at her. "How was your walk here this morning?"

Now she has his full attention. Cato closes her fridge and stares as if, by looking at her long enough, he'll manage to decipher insult in her innocuous question. "I didn't know you were so concerned about my welfare."

She thinks of Andromeda's green eyes, always so wide, and tries to fashion hers in the same hunted-animal style. "There's a lot of rain still on the roads from the storm last night," she says, voice as saccharine coated as ever, "I just wanted to make sure you didn't trip again."

Without giving him a chance to reply, she walks off to the front door and forces herself not to look for his reaction. Facial contortions hardly matter when she can hear his easy breath shift into seething.

She's walked down her porch steps and proceeded to skip over a puddle before he catches up with her. "I'm flattered," he says in a voice hard enough to imply he feels anything but. "I didn't think you cared enough to watch my fight yesterday."

Clove's back tightens. Trying to keep her tone blank and her stride brisk, she keeps walking. "Please. My fight just ended early, and I got bored. You and Gregoric happened to provide the nearest form of entertainment."

That's all her fascination was, after all. Entertainment. Entertainment and curiosity in who she'd be able to call her training partner the next day. That's the only reason her breath caught, her stomach sunk, with each twist and turn the fight took.

He thuds a foot right into one of the puddles that she's carefully evaded and grins. "Not that early. Fighting Achates for forty-five minutes? I'd have thought you'd beat him in ten." Clove refuses to look at him so she can't be sure if he's as close to her right then as his suddenly smothering presence would have her think. "Off your game, little girl?"

Tightening the ponytail that suddenly seems too loose, she ignores him. She's hardly about to admit that she'd purposely held back just for the sake of watching him. That just sounded… well, it sounded like something his lapdog of a friend would do. Pathetic. She pulls her ponytail even tighter. "Of course not."

He ignores her. "Or maybe you've just forgotten how to finish a fight." Malice twists his lips upward. "I'm sure you could have had Achates easy if you'd just tried the stunt you pulled at Andie's last week to beat me."

A bit tighter. Why does her hair still feel so loose? He makes it sound as though the only reason she'd gotten the upper hand was her excruciatingly humiliating lapse in judgment. She tightens her ponytail a bit more, and opens her mouth to remind me that she'd only stuck her tongue into his mouth after gaining the upper hand. It's not as if she's some _whore_ who- Her hair band breaks. Cato chuckles.

Glaring at him, she darts a foot out in his path and relishes in the sound of his fall.


End file.
